The First One's Free (11 page)

Athena stopped, which caused Tishla to stop
with her. “We can arrange that, but that will take some time. In
the meantime, I will arrange accommodations for you, something a
little more private than a hospital. ”

13

Two rooms and a water closet were all that
made up what the humans called “an apartment.” Once Tishla
extrapolated and understood the word, she decided it was a
let-down. To her, “apartment,” or its Realm equivalent, meant the
spacious suite of rooms she had even in Kai’s primitive dwellings
on Essenar and Hanar. This place was a slum.

Well, by her standards, it was a slum. It
probably did very well for the humans, particularly considering
their culture. She noticed that even the leaders, at least on
Metis, tended to work all the time. When they did not, they spent
most of their free time away from their homes. At least in
Sophiopolis. She had not seen any families since her arrival.

Two weeks after the humans moved her to the
apartment, Athena Jovann arrived bearing a large wooden box and
some fresh bread. By now, Tishla had a menu of local foods she
could eat. She had started with potatoes, and by the time she tired
of the starchy tubers, they had figured out what proteins and plant
life she could safely consume.

“I just dropped by to bring you this. We
found it in the hold of your ship,” said Athena, placing the box on
a table that dominated one side of the apartment. “And some bread
made from the local grain. I figured you might want to eat
something besides vegetables.”

Tishla ignored the food and opened the box.
Inside lay the useless control crystal, a small holo disc that had
not yet been activated, and… “Wow.”

“That’s a big dagger,” said Athena.

“My mate, despite not being a warrior, has
combat experience.”

“Well, I also wanted to tell you that we’ve
lifted your restrictions. You can now move about the city
freely.”

“Thank you,” said Tishla, “but where would I
go?”

“I would stick to the entertainment district.
Yes, people will see your gray skin and wide nose and know you are
an alien, but aliens are more common there. Stay away from the
countryside or the outskirts of the city. Unless you’re white or
brown with a bulb of a nose like ours…” Athena wrinkled her nose
and smiled. “…you’re apt to be subjected to stares, maybe
hostility.”

“Violence?”

“I can’t promise you it won’t happen, but you
reduce the risk by sticking close to the city center.”

“What about data? I’m not that all fascinated
by my own people’s sport, and yours is starting to lose its novelty
for me.” And in what culture did people make a living playing
children’s games or engaging in light combat for fun?

“We’ve opened those up. You should now be
able to watch any news feed and go to any site to you choose.”

That you’ve told me about.

Athena relaxed her rigid pose. “That said,
I’d like to invite you to dinner this evening. I’ll send an
ubur
around to pick you up.”

“‘
Ubur
’?”

“It’s a type of personal drone, a driverless
car that you can hire to take you anywhere or to have things
delivered. Do you have anything like that on your world?”

“I’ve spent the last five rev- ” She stopped
herself. They said
years
, which translated as an archaic
term in the Realm. “The last five years on two primitive colonies.
The only drone vehicles we used were for moving supplies
around.”

“I see. Well, welcome to Metis, Tishla. This
time for real. Can I have you picked up at 1700?”

The number told Tishla this was when
afternoon became evening here. “That would be fine.”

*****

As soon as Athena left, Tishla thumbed the
holo disc. It projected Kai’s image into the middle of the room.
She could almost reach out and touch him. Almost.

“Hey, Buckteeth,” he said, calling her by the
childhood name he gave her when they were partners in crime rather
than lovers or Master and servant. “How’s our child? I’m sure you
know by now. I couldn’t risk telling you while you were on Hanar.
You might not have gone with Marq otherwise.”

She felt anger well up within her when she
remembered that, for a brief time, Marq actually owned her.

“The child is partly why I sent you away with
him,” Kai’s image continued. “As his possession, he would have to
forfeit your indenture upon returning to his own space. The control
crystal knows this. Congratulations, Tishla. You’re a Free Woman.
You also carry my heir within you, which makes you my heir as well.
And now, my love, I need you to return. If I am dead by the time
you see this, I need you to take my place. My brother will help you
stake your claim to Hanar and to my estate. And if I’m alive… Well,
Tish, I need you. You see, I may have purchased you, but it’s you
who owns me. You always have.”

Tishla swallowed, trying to blink tears back
from her eyes. “Oh, Kai…”

“If you have this,” he continued, “then you
also have my dagger. I’ve learned through my sources that the last
man I cut with it is at the Laputan consulate on Metis. Find him.
Show him the dagger. He will know you are with me and will help
you.” He smiled that goofy smile of his. “Yes, I know. Men are
strange. Try to kill each other once, friends for life. Which makes
him a friend of yours.”

She looked at the dagger. A little dried
blood still marred the shimmering blade. She wondered what Kai had
done to draw that blood and yet make his victim his friend.

“Get back as quickly as you can,” said Kai.
“Stake your claim if I’m gone. Summon the Soveriegn if Laral fights
you. Do it for me. Do it for our child.” He paused. “Do it for
yourself, Tishla. It’s time you took your rightful place in the
Realm.”

He faded from view. Tishla sank to her knees
and wept. She had no way of knowing for certain, but inside, she
knew. Kai was dead. Why else would he depend on a former enemy to
get her back to the Realm? And yet he still held sway over her. He
always would. She would not have it any other way. But Kai was
gone. And two men had taken him from her. Laral would have to wait
until she returned to Hanar to get the justice Kai deserved. The
human Marq, on the other hand…

She applied her newly opened search engine to
the one burning question that had obsessed her since she awoke in
that hospital room over a turn before. “Please find me the
residence of a human who calls himself
Marq Katergarus
.”

It amused her that Marq had taken on an alias
in another human language that translated as “trickster.”
Okay,
trickster, let’s see how clever you really are.

14

Marq Katergarus proved to be rather easy to
find once she attained her freedom. Approaching him, however,
proved to be difficult. Unfortunately, Tishla was the only citizen
of the Realm on the planet. Everywhere she went, she drew stares,
the gray woman with shimmering white hair and the broad nose. To
these people, she might as well have been a Gray.

So she hunted for Marq in the darkness,
wearing the hooded jacket Athena had kindly loaned her. It took
some time to trace him, but not long. In fact, it turned out he had
hidden in plain sight.

The apartment building was a boring structure
made of what humans called “cinder block.” It had almost no
security, and Tishla knew why. People with heavy security have
something to secure. She and Kai had lived among enough criminals
to understand that security often attracted thieves. If it’s
valuable enough to protect, they would reason, it is valuable
enough to steal.

It might have been a risk. Anyone can break
into a place secured with nothing more than locks, but Tishla knew
Marq would not take such chances. Human technology was such that he
could provide hidden safeguards on his home-away-from-home without
tipping off the authorities or anyone else looking for him.

Actually, she didn’t care if he knew she was
there. She wanted him to know. She wanted him to see her. So
instead of trying to enter his apartment, she took up station in an
alcove down the hall and waited for him to enter or leave. No doubt
the police had followed her. Good. If she accomplished what she set
out to do, they could have him.

In the long coat Athena had provided, she had
placed the contents of the box Kai had sent along – the now-useless
pendant that once controlled the nanites in her blood, the holo
disc, a locket Kai had engraved with a marriage pledge, and the
dagger. That dagger meant a lot to Kai, and now it was Tishla’s.
She vowed to honor it and use it with purpose.

Marq appeared after an hour, slipping inside
as though unobserved, or at least, not particularly concerned if he
was. She fell in step behind him, head down, not really caring if
he turned around and saw her. On Marq’s floor, she hung back a
short distance, feigning interest in another door. As Marq palmed
the bio-lock to his apartment, she charged. Pushing him inside, she
put Kai’s dagger to his throat.

“Hello,
Master
.” The second word came
out as a sneer. “It’s your concubine, come to shave you.”

A thin trickle of blood ran down his
neck.

“I can explain,” said Marq, sounding as calm
as a man could just before having his throat slit. “I did not know
they would keep you so long. I would have told you about my deal
with Kai, but there was never the opportunity. I…”

Tishla pressed the flat of the knife a little
harder against his flesh.

Now Marq’s breathing quickened a bit as the
calm faded to fear. “You know the penalty for killing one’s Master,
don’t you?”

“You know our penalty for theft, don’t you?”
Her tone mocked Marq’s. “By Realm law, I became a Free Woman the
moment you brought me into Compact space. You deliberately took me
to your people, who don’t have slavery.”

“Well, not like…”

She tilted the blade once more so the edge
now pressed into the skin. “If you purchase another sentient being,
particularly another primate, they automatically become free the
moment they step into Compact space. Realm law says that if a
master takes anyone indentured to him or her to such a place, they
forfeit the contract, and the servant becomes a Free Person.”

“There’s still the matter of the nano-leash
swimming in your bloodstream,” said Marq. “Kill me, and no one can
turn those lethal bugs off for you.”

She made another tiny little cut in his skin,
enough to draw blood once more. “Ask me if I care? Did you think
Kai would not send me with a
serrmin
like you into free
space without some sort of message?”

“Think about our child, Tishla. You were my
property until we reached Metis. That makes the child…” He screamed
as the knife moved again.

“So you knew before I did?” said Tishla.

“Kai said he knew already. Said the nanites
in your blood informed him as soon as you conceived. But he was
afraid for you.”

“Then you know the child is mine.” This slug
did not need to know she was having twins. “As its mother, I am its
heir and guardian. Now, then, tell me the real reason you came to
Essenar with a
poe-tay-toe
. I’m most interested. I
understand that little tuber started a few wars in your ancient
history.”

15

Best waited outside the apartment block, a
gray cinderblock building that recalled an earlier age, one where
Jefivah was seen as a wonder instead of an armpit. He sat on a park
bench seemingly engrossed in whatever he had displayed in the palm
of his hand. Never mind that the wrist chip connected to the
nanotat in his palm was not synched up with Metis’s local internet.
To anyone looking, he was just another commuter waiting on a
trambot to take him home.

The gray woman caught his eye. Had he not
been watching the building so closely, he might not have given her
a second look. However, her almost human-like appearance caught his
attention. At first, he thought there was something a little off,
like the woman had simply had an odd skintone. Metisian women had
taken to ingesting nanites that repigmented the skin, though ashen
gray was not a common shade that he’d noticed since his
arrival.

No, at closer inspection, this one was
definitely not human. She had a flatter nose, and her hair was snow
white, not quite the platinum blonde of humans. Her posture also
suggested she was not
Homo sapiens
. At first, Best thought
she might be an Orag, a transplanted species of human that went
extinct on Earth millennia before recorded history began. Only
Orags resembled Euros in skintone. They were also shorter, and one
sometimes had to look twice to realize (assuming the accent did not
give it away) that the person in question did not trace his or her
ancestry to Earth during recorded history.

She was not one of the so-called “Grays”
either. Humans had come across the short, bug-eyed creatures not
long after they perfected wormhole travel at will. Their discovery
had shed light on some of the legends that grew out of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Instead of fostering peace
and understanding, however, the newly-spacefaring humans began
capturing and torturing the Grays. The diminutive aliens now had a
particular fear of any sort of medical probe.

This woman was not one of them. For starters,
her eyes, if oddly shaped, appeared to be the same size as humans.
She was yet another primate species, but one Best had never seen
before.

He watched as she
disappeared inside the building, thinking it best that he stay
where he was until she emerged again. If his conversation with
Luxhomme went the way he anticipated, it probably wasn’t a good
idea to have a strange alien woman around to witness it. Not before
Best could summon the police and explain himself.