Stellarnet Rebel (14 page)

Duin waved his hand, as if brushing aside a pile of something unpleasant.

“I tried a different tactic for a while, and rather than focusing on Glin, I began to blog Asteria. As you did, J’ni, when you weren’t writing about Glin. I reported what I found, but also explained how the eyes of a Glin see these things. I wrote about the orphans, the murder rate, the involuntary medication of those deemed insane—as if there’s such a thing as sanity. Sanity, like ownership, is an illusion. I also wrote about the unauthorized colonists. Hundreds more unapproved blocks arrived after you left.”

“Where have they put them all?”
J’ni asked.

“They started a second grid.” He switched back to English and gestured with his hand as if he were placing items in an invisible model. “The first block of Sector A in Asteria 2.0 connects with the last block in Sector Y of Asteria 1.0. But many of the new blocks lacked hardware and couldn’t be connected to the power grid, the Asternet or the recycling systems. I’ve taken video of the individuals who were living and dying in the thoroughfares.”

“Were? Past tense?” said J’ni.

“Several charities and human rights organizations got involved.”

“Has J.T. been paying you for all this Star 20 content? The pay scale at that level is astronomical.”

“Your blog took a leap in popularity the moment you kicked Seth in the face.” Duin chuckled. “Somehow, a vid of that was leaked onto the net. I have no idea how, because you were in the military zone at the time. It was not my doing.”

“But you’ve managed to keep my blog at the top for two months.”

“I only tried to do what you would do, to use the tools of the language and the Stellarnet as you showed me. You would have been blogging all of this, if you were there.” He spoke in Glinnish for Sala’s benefit.
“My truth-telling attracted the attention of Amnesty Interstellar. They sent representatives to Asteria, to see the conditions there. I was able to obtain recognition of the Glin as an ethnic group deserving of right and protections. From there, I was finally able to get some acknowledgment from the United Nations. The council of elders on Earth,”
he explained to his mother.

“Well, go then,”
Sala insisted.
“You can’t hunt a
wallump
from dry ground. Take J’ni to Asteria, and let me know as soon as the rest of us can come home. A swift and painful death to the enemies of freedom
.”

“Anah,”
agreed Duin.
“I am eager to return.”

“Don’t you want to see everyone?”
J’ni asked.
“Nish is here, from Long River.”

Duin waved his hands.
“I’ll be stuck here drinking gifts of water and settling disputes and doing everything but liberating Glin. No, we should leave right away.”

J’ni got up to pack. Not that she had much—her old dress, her drawings and notes. She wanted to bring some of the plants she’d been collecting, to show Dr. Geber and to blog about them. But, glancing around the small room, she realized it was all missing.

“Where are my papers and things?”

Sala pointed to a basket by the door.
“There. I told him to add the
bava,
too.
”
 

“Him” meant Belloc, who must have started packing for her as soon as he saw Duin.

“Thank you, Sala.”
J’ni kissed her cheek.

Sala ran her hands over J’ni’s face and shoulders. The Glin’s eyes grew thick and milky.
“Go, go away, I’m tired and I need my sleep,”
she said, turning to the wall.

J’ni put her arms around Sala and hugged her, then carried the basket out the door. As Duin stepped over the threshold, his mother grabbed him by the arm. She touched her heart and then touched his forehead.

“No matter the outcome of this,”
she said,
“I am proud of you. I have always been proud of you.”

“I know, Sala.”

“No, you don’t. The time will come, it always does, when you will be frustrated, be less than you want to be, do less than you want to do. And you will think less of yourself. But I won’t think less of you. Know that, Elder Duin
.”

As Duin embraced his mother, J’ni glanced at Belloc and saw that his eyes were filmed over with Glin tears. She knelt down beside him.
“Thank you for packing for me.”

Belloc didn’t reply. She had already thanked him a thousand times, for a thousand different things. And he had already told her a thousand times that she didn’t have to.

She was ecstatic to see Duin again and couldn’t wait to return to Asteria. While
Wandalin
was beautiful, she missed the Asternet, her blog, toilets, humans and the comfort of familiar food. But the thought of saying good-bye to Belloc tore her up inside, like the pain of shifting through space. Her own tears rose up in her eyes. Looking through them made everything seem to glimmer.

“Belloc.” She reached out and touched his knee. A drop escaped her eye and fell. His hand snapped out and he caught the tear, clenching it in his hand.

Duin picked up the basket. “We should go, J’ni.”

“Just a moment. Please.” She ran her hands over her bracer, activating the camera, and recorded a brief vid of the village. Then she recorded Belloc.

When she stood up, so did he.

“I hope you’ll be able to return to Glin, soon,”
J’ni told him.
“Then maybe I can visit you. Or you could visit Asteria.”

“Anah.”
Belloc turned from her to Duin and held up his palms.
“These hands were spared by the judgment of J’ni Nagyx Duin. And so I gave them to her. By
nagyx,
they are yours as well.”

Duin looked back and forth between J’ni and Belloc. Again, Duin had that blank, unreadable expression. He looked at Sala, and their eyes held for a moment. J’ni wished she knew what was going through the minds of mother and son.

Then Duin thrust the basket into Belloc’s outstretched hands.
“As you say. Here.”

Belloc hefted the basket onto his shoulder and followed Duin. J’ni stood there for a moment, watching them both walk away without her, feeling something significant had happened, but she had no idea what. Then she ran to catch up with them.

“I think you’ve done enough for me already, Belloc,”
she said.

“Never,”
Belloc replied.

“Wouldn’t you rather stay here?”
she asked.

“Meh,”
he replied.
No
. It was only one word, but a world of feeling in it.

J’ni worried that Duin might get the wrong idea about her and Belloc. “But, he can’t come,” she said to Duin in English. “They wouldn’t let him into the colony.”

“He’ll have to be quarantined for a few hours and spend some time with Dr. Geber, but I don’t see why not.”

“Where’s he going to live when we get there?”

“He could build a hut in the garden.”

“What’s he going to eat?” she asked.

“We’ll buy his food,” said Duin. “As we buy ours.”

“What’s he going to
do?
”

Duin halted and gestured for Belloc to lower the basket. Removing the lid, he rummaged around, then asked J’ni, “Where’s the translator?”

She pulled it out of her shoulder bag. Duin pushed a few buttons on it, then thrust it into the front of Belloc’s suit and continued walking. The device echoed Duin’s words in Glinnish.

“He’ll learn your language, to begin with, and I will teach him to fly the Tikati ship. I need a co-pilot.”

“If you ever get lost… Belloc? Belloc!”

“An—”
Belloc stopped himself from speaking Glinnish and replied, “Yes.”

“I said, if you ever get lost,” Duin tapped the wall, “touch anywhere, like this.” A map of the colony appeared. “You understand maps, don’t you?”

Belloc was trying to watch J’ni and listen to Duin at the same time. He wasn’t doing either very well, because the humans kept distracting him. There were so many. He thought the Glin were numerous on
Wandalin
, but that was a trickle compared to the ocean of beings here, pouring past him, moving, swirling, rushing around him. Many had pictures on their skin and clothes, and to Belloc’s wonderment, some of the pictures moved. And their colors—they weren’t patterned like Glin, but their hair, eyes and clothing were every color he’d ever seen, and some he hadn’t. A few had clothes, hair or skin designs that were the same color as Belloc. No Glin was his color. Not even his mother.

Duin punched him in the arm to get his attention.

“Guh?”
Belloc said, and heard the translation from the device tucked into the front of his suit. He repeated the Earth word. “What?”

“Do you understand maps?” Duin would only speak to him in English. He said Belloc would learn faster that way. “I know you can’t read this language, yet, but you can use the translator if you need to. Look here.”

Belloc stared at a human who had several silver spikes sprouting from his face.

The elder Glin grabbed Belloc by the back of the head and shoved his nose to the wall. “That little blue dot is where we are standing in relation to the rest of the colony.” Duin pointed at the dot on the wall, near the tip of Belloc’s nose. “These lines are the hallways and thoroughfares, and this square is the Colony Square. See these here? Those are the letters and numbers of the sectors and blocks around us.”

“There are so many,”
Belloc said in Glinnish.

“Yes, well, that’s why I’m showing this to you. One thoroughfare looks much like another. I didn’t know how to use the walls when I first arrived and I spent a lot of time being lost. Look, you can also do this—” he moved his fingers over the wall, “—and get a keyboard and a prompt. Type my name or J’ni’s to contact one of us. I’m spelled D-U-I-N. She is spelled G-E-N-E-V-I… never mind. Just remember D-U-I-N. Go on, touch the letters.”

Belloc touched the symbols on the wall as he was shown and Duin’s bracer chimed. When Duin lifted his forearm level with his face, an image of him also appeared on the wall. Belloc touched the picture of Duin. The picture moved when Duin moved, which surprised Belloc and he pulled his hand away.

“My bracer has a camera.” Duin pointed to a spot on his device, and for a moment his image disappeared from the wall. When Duin moved his finger away, his image reappeared.

“Camera.” Belloc repeated the Earth word. There was no Glinnish translation.

“A camera is like an eye. What your eye sees goes into your brain.” He thumped Belloc on the head. “What this eye sees goes into the Asternet.” He thumped the wall.

Duin moved his bracer and images of the Colony Square, J’ni and Belloc appeared on the wall. Some of the humans waved and said, “’Lo, Duin.”

“’Lo.” Duin nodded and smiled at them.

Everyone in the colony seemed to know Duin and J’ni.

“Are you an elder here, too?”
Belloc asked.

“No.”

“Is J’ni?”

“Am I what?” J’ni stuffed her new clothing into her bag. Belloc didn’t understand why she needed more clothes, since she had her
mellump
suit and a
bava
. J’ni said they were worth too much to wear all the time, and would attract too much attention. Belloc understood the desire to avoid attention. He’d been trying to avoid attention all his life. But he didn’t understand why the Glin clothes would be so good that she
wouldn’t
wear them.

“An elder,”
Belloc said to her.
“You are not old, but you are important.”

J’ni moved to another vendor. Duin and Belloc followed her, and the images captured by Duin’s camera moved along the wall with them until Duin turned them off.

“I’m not that much younger than Duin,” she told him. “And I’m not that important.”

Belloc doubted both.

“But you’re right,” she said. “For humans, age has very little to do with importance. How old are you, Belloc?”

“Fourteen rain seasons.”

“Twenty-one years old? You’re so young.”

Belloc looked down at himself.
“Am I?”
By Glin reckoning, he’d reached maturity five rain seasons earlier, when he could hunt on his own and knew he was male.

Her eyes moved up and down the length of him. “Right. Glin age faster than humans.”

“He should be married and raising children,” said Duin.

“Why?”
asked Belloc.

“Why? Because you’re not really an adult until you’re responsible for the lives of others. I had four descendants by the time I was your age. Have you ever had a wife?”

“No.” Belloc had spent his life in isolation, with no one but his mother. He hadn’t spent time with any other female, except J’ni.

“I assume you like females,” said Duin, watching Belloc watch J’ni.

“I like females,” Belloc agreed, echoing Duin’s words in the human language.

J’ni was gathering something that looked like nuts from a
gop
tree, or maybe some kind of small snail. Belloc was surprised to see the look of arousal on her face when she put one in her mouth. “I so missed this.”

She tried to give one to Duin, but he grimaced in disgust. “It has the consistency and color of
nibbalug
dung and tastes like an oozing
iggli
.”

“How would you know?” she asked.

“I was a child once, with four older siblings who thought it was amusing to trick me.”

“How mean,” she said.

“Yes, it was great fun,” Duin laughed. “And I, in turn, amused myself at the expense of my younger siblings.”

“What about you, Belloc?” she asked.

“I have no siblings.”

“No, I meant this.” J’ni held one of the round, brown objects up to his mouth.

Belloc never had the opportunity to share food with her on
Meglin
. How he’d wished, every single day, that he could hunt for her, offer her food, even if she refused it. But the
Wandant
insisted she only eat what they gave her or she would get sick. Hunting the
mellump
for her suit was all he could do, but it didn’t mean the same thing.

“What is it?”
Belloc asked her.

“Candy,” she said. “There’s a green block that grows cocoa beans and makes its own chocolate. This one’s sweetened with real honey.”

He looked at Duin. She had offered it to her
nagyx
first, so it wasn’t rude of Belloc to take it. But he didn’t want to upset the older Glin any more than he would have wanted to upset J’ni herself. She and Duin were One.

But Duin didn’t seem to care. He was looking at something on his bracer.

Grasping J’ni’s wrist, Belloc looked over her hand and into her eyes. “Thank you,” he said. That phrase J’ni had said to him several times before. Belloc took the candy in his mouth and she let it go.
It is foul,
he thought, but he swallowed it with an impassive face. He’d eaten worse. If this was the price he had to pay to share food with her, and to feel her fingertips on his lips, he would eat every last one.

J’ni put the rest of the chocolate in her bag and then checked her bracer. “Duin, is that the balance in our account?”

Duin glanced at her arm. “Yes, I think so.”

“You have got to be shitting me.”

“I assure you, I’m not.”

“Where did it come from?”

“INC, your followers, the Glin genetic research. Dr. Geber’s team has made a lot of progress there and already patented several new bio-technologies. And some of the money comes from confidential sources.” Duin leaned close to J’ni and whispered words that Belloc could not understand nor could the translator hear. Then he went on in a normal tone. “That was one of the reasons you were exonerated. When I realized how important it was to them, I refused to provide any further intelligence until you were free to return. They dropped the charges
and
they started giving me great gobs of money.”

“Don’t talk about it here,” she said.

“My back is to the netcam.” A tone sounded from Duin’s bracer and he examined his forearm. “It’s another vid from your parents. They sent several while you were gone.”

“They paid for the extra bandwidth, of course, because they couldn’t be bothered to type an email.”

“I don’t think they viewed any of the messages I sent them. I tried to explain what had happened, where you were, and that you were safe. But they only grew increasingly distressed.”

“Seth probably got them all worked up,” she said. “God knows what he’s been telling them.”

J’ni and Duin both viewed the new message on J’ni’s bracer. Belloc watched over their shoulders.

“Genny, I can’t tell you how disappointed we are,” said a female who looked like an older J’ni with long orange hair. “Your father is so upset, we’re going to the moon.”

“Because slot machines and buffets are the perfect cure,” J’ni said as the message continued.

“Then, to have this
alien
emailing us. I don’t know what’s going on, but Seth will help you. I l’upped him on the net, and I trust him. He has the best gen-mods, good networks, an exemplary military record. The grandchild you two would have! Get away from those aliens, they are fallen angels who want to destroy this holy planet given to us by—”

J’ni turned off the message. “Sorry, my parents are religious zealots.”

“Zealots?” Belloc repeated.

“I don’t think that one’s in the translator.” Duin reached over and pulled the device out of Belloc’s suit. “Fanatic, follower, devotee.”

“Crackpot, lamebrain, fruitcake,” J’ni added her own triad.

“Cracked pot and lame brain I can understand, but fruitcake sounds rather pleasant,” Duin said, as he added
zealot
to the device. “Why can’t you eat that, instead of chocolate?”

She laughed and hugged Duin’s waist, pushing her large breasts against his back. “I love you.”

“To my great good fortune,” Duin replied over his shoulder. “And I would kiss you, but you probably still taste like
iggli
.”

“What is an
iggli
anyway?” she asked.

“A fungus. That moves.” Duin wiggled his hand up her arm to illustrate. “I’m thinking I could fund our liberation by selling the second most foul thing on our planet—after the Tikati, of course—to humans like you who would stuff themselves with it until they got a raging case of hallucinogenic indigestion.”

J’ni laughed harder, and rained kisses on his speckled neck.

Watching them, Belloc was even more determined to learn all he could about humans, their language, their Asternet walls, their food and their culture. He would learn to fly the Tikati ship, and help Duin, and someday he would prove that he was brave, brilliant, capable and amusing, too.

Then
he
would kiss J’ni, even if she tasted like
iggli
.

Belloc slept in the garden, curled up on the ground beside the fish pond. Not that he slept much. He spent most of his time looking at everything in Duin’s collection or practicing English with the translator. J’ni told him to knock on the door when he was awake, but he didn’t want to interrupt them doing what they had done at the lake on
Meglin
. And if he were Duin, he’d be doing that as much as possible.

The thought made him flush with arousal. He didn’t feel guilty for watching them—as he didn’t feel guilty for seeing J’ni without clothes on. What he felt guilty about was wishing that she was not
J’ni Nagyx Duin
. But he couldn’t help it. For the first time in his life, someone had taken him in instead of driving him away, protected him instead of hurting him. He would never forget the way she seized Ga’Duhn’s arm to stop him from cutting off Belloc’s hand. Belloc was surprised, again and again, whenever she laughed. J’ni was fearless and joyful in a way he’d never known anyone to be. His mother had never laughed and she had lived in fear every day of her life, even to the end.

J’ni had the other half of her soul. Duin, Soulbound of J’ni, Elder of Long River, Envoy to Earth, Hero of the
Tah Ga’lin
Uprising, Founder of the Freedom Council, and INC Star 20 Blogger.

Still, Belloc remembered the drop of rain that fell from her eyes when she thought she wouldn’t see him again, and it gave him hope.

***

Belloc learned about the words
reconnaissance
and
intelligence
when he accompanied Duin to Glin. They flew around and looked for Tikati outposts, recorded vids, and collected more water for Asteria. Finding water was difficult, because Duin refused to take it from inhabited lakes or rivers, and they had to avoid Tikati. So Belloc saw areas of Glin he never knew existed.

“I am content to share both water and information with the humans,” Duin said as they stood on the bridge of the stolen Tikati ship. “But I would love to know when they will be content to share freedom with us.”

Duin drilled Belloc on the features of the Tikati vessel. Alone with Duin, without J’ni or the colony to distract him, Belloc found it much easier to pay attention. It also helped that he had a drenching desire to understand. Belloc’s mother died in a Tikati ship, because he didn’t know what to do. He would have died too—along with the screaming, trapped Glin—if the Finders had not discovered them. The prison ship was much larger than this one, but it had a bridge, full of lights and flat reflective surfaces that looked like water but were not liquid, and windows that were not openings. Now he understood. The room controlled the entire ship.

“For a race that didn’t have space travel five rain seasons ago, they managed to figure out how to automate everything, so it’s not too difficult. Pay close attention to that sensor, there—” Duin pointed, “—because if that changes color, it means another ship is nearby, and the only other ships out here are Tikati ships, so we will have to leave in a hurry. And watch that one—” he indicated another glowing light, “—because that’s the Tikat communication channel, and if that lights up, it means they’re trying to contact us.”