Space Hostages (25 page)

“W
hat's going to happen to us?” asked Josephine.

We were in the lounge where Trommler had greeted us that first day on the
Helen
. Trommler was sitting in a big leather chair, sipping a drink one of his doves had brought to him. We were on the floor. Trommler had knocked us down with a whisk of the silver device as soon as we came in, and we'd none of us dared to move since. The Krakkiluks looked ridiculously large in a room built for humans and Morrors, forlornly holding claws by the pool table. It seemed so long since we had been here before.

The Goldfish, oddly, was still translating everything, though it didn't seem to realize it was doing it now.

“O stolen treasure,”
Qualt-zu-Quo was saying miserably.

“O flower in the storm,”
said Kat-li-Yaka.

“It's okay, we'll be okay,” Carl was telling Noel.

But Noel was inconsolable, and Carl and Josephine and I were all coughing—we'd been breathing oxygen and nitrogen at the Free Eemala camp, but the collars had kicked us when we were down, and my already strained lungs felt as bruised as the rest of me. At least we had nontoxic air now, I thought dully.

The green of the sky faded to black as we cleared the atmosphere. I saw the horrible shape of the satellite, crouching above the planet like a monster.

“Are they going to throw us out of the airlock again?” Josephine persisted.

“No one threw
you
out of the airlock, if I remember,” Trommler said to her. “If you had sat still and minded your own business—”

Josephine forced a smile. “Never been one of my strengths,” she said—much more proudly than I knew she felt.

“Carl'd be dead! Alice'd be
dead
,” said Noel. “What's wrong with you? Don't you care at all?”

Trommler shrugged. “Earth should have complied immediately; President Chakrabarty knew the consequences.”

“Did I get you into trouble?” asked Josephine, leaning against the wall, gazing out at Yaela through the huge windows. “Because I upgraded the Goldfish with Häxeri and took it to Yaela. The Eemala rebels couldn't have come so close to destroying the satellite without it. Was that when Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak found out you'd taken Krakkiluk technology, that you'd been selling it on Earth as Häxeri? Ah—”

She bent forward, gasping, the light on the collar flashing.

“Leave her alone,” I said.

“We
rescued
you,” said Noel, still incredulous. “How can you do this?”

“It's his chance to get back in with the Krakkiluks,” gasped Josephine. “He had a deal with them, but he messed it up. Are you sure this'll be enough? It's because of
you
that my sister was able to hack their ship.
You're
the reason the Eemala fired that missile. That's all on you—”

She slid to the ground, her limbs jolting.

“Stop!” I begged her. “Josephine, stop.”

But she had succeeded in getting to Trommler, at least a bit. “You seem to think I had some kind of
choice
in this!” he said.

“Well,” said Carl. “Yeah.” And he clenched his teeth against the jolt of punishment that followed.

“This was
inevitable
,” said Trommler. “The Expanse would never have tolerated the Morrors seizing that moon. Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak intercepted me on my first trip out there last year. The terraforming had already started; the Morrors were already arriving. She demanded I undo it, but of course I couldn't without Valerie Muldoon. What could I do? She might have killed me if I hadn't told her how to get what she wanted. Obviously, Krakkiluk tech was of interest to an engineer. Why shouldn't I have brought it to Earth?”

“Oh, yeah, Earth,” I said. “The other planet you handed over. Didn't Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak give you enough for that?”

I was punished for that, of course. But Trommler kept talking anyway.

“It's inevitable Earth will be absorbed into the Expanse. They've spread as far as Alpha Centauri—they were bound to discover Earth and its warm seas before long. Now or twenty years from now, what's the difference?”

I'm pretty sure I could have thought of a difference or two. But I didn't feel like telling him about them, and it wasn't even just that I knew he'd probably zap me.

“Will we go back to Earth? Look after Krakkiluk
babies in the sea?” Carl said after a while.

“To Earth, no—why bother flying a handful of troublesome spawn all that way? But there's plenty for collared workers to do in the Expanse. Yes, you might be nursing Krakkiluk infants, or harvesting Takwuk, or cleaning ships. I'm sure a use will be found for you.”

“Hey, kids, won't that be great?” the Goldfish chimed in. “It's super being useful and productive!”

I shuddered.

“Release it,” said Th
saaa—
unexpectedly, because Th
saaa
had never been the Goldfish's biggest fan. “It has no weapons; it can't threaten you. Let it at least be itself. This is obscene.”

“Aww, I'm fine how I am, Th
saaa
, buddy,” said the Goldfish. I
wanted
to believe I could hear a glazed, flattened tone in its voice, something to show how this wasn't our Goldfish talking. But it sounded as perkily sincere as it always did. “Everything is perfect!”

I could see the Krakkiluk ship now, gold and black in the distance. “Will we be together?” I said.

Trommler snorted. “After the trouble the pack of you caused together? Of course not.”

Noel stopped crying, because this was too big and awful for crying over.

“Surely they will not separate us,”
said Qualt-zu-Quo, clutching Kat-li-Yaka, but Trommler didn't read the Goldfish's subtitle and didn't answer. The Krakkiluks keened, a shrill, rattling sound.

Helen spoke for the first time: “Captain, an incoming communication from Lady Sklat-kli-Sklak.”

“Helen,” I said urgently. “Helen!”

Another shock of punishment. Helen didn't answer me. When it was over, I noticed Trommler looked anxious.

“Not here. I'll speak to her on the bridge,” he said to Helen. He rose from his chair and sketched an invisible circle around us in the air with the silver device, and another around the Krakkiluks, and strode out.

Carl was the first to jump up and make for the door. As soon as he crossed the invisible line Trommler had left, the collar activated and he fell back, gasping. I tried the same thing, out of sheer perversity, I guess. It wasn't as if I didn't know what would happen. You couldn't not
try,
though.

My body jumped back inside the line of its own accord, the pain still fizzing everywhere, my eyelids to my fingertips to my feet.

Maybe it was like a wall, or an electric fence, and
if I could bull through it, I'd be okay on the other side.

I gritted my teeth and stepped through the line, and pain slammed into the back of my neck and scratched down my spine, but I forced another step forward and another and it felt as if my head was going to burst. Just a little farther, I told myself. And then I was on the ground, jerking like a caught fish, and I couldn't move, couldn't make my mind's commands louder than the noise of the collar.

“Alice!”

Josephine lunged through the line with a grunt of pain and dragged me back by one foot. I lay on the floor, waiting for the aftershocks to ease off.

Then we sat still, looking at each other. All the others' faces—dazed and horrified and dirty—looked somehow even more real than normal, like the colors and definition had all been turned up. I guess I was trying to memorize them.

Josephine let out a long breath and looked at me. “Well,” she said. And for a while, she didn't say anything else. Then: “I guess at least I don't have to worry about you writing all this up anymore.”

I grinned. Somehow. “Oh, don't be so sure,” I said. “They'll have computers, I expect. Wherever I end up.”

“They're not going to give you a computer,” said Josephine.

“Pencil and paper it is, then,” I said.

“Your handwriting, though.”

“Doctors are supposed to have bad handwriting,” I said.

But I wasn't going to be a doctor anymore.

I wondered what color the sky would be on the planet I would be sent to. Whether the people would have shells or wings or four limbs or forty or something completely beyond what I could imagine. I wondered how long I could live in that world's strange air. Perhaps a long time. I'm not even grown up yet, I thought, and I imagined the skin on my hands weathering from working in alien seas.

I thought how I'd grow old and maybe I'd forget English and Hindi and Thly
waaa
-lay; maybe I'd only remember Earth the vague way the Krakkiluks remembered the oceans they were born in, and one day I'd be dying and I'd think, Was I truly born on some other world? Or was it a dream? I think I had friends when I was very young—a girl and two boys and a creature who changed color with every mood—but I can't remember their names now.

Then I thought, No.

I remembered the Eemala. The bare patch of
skin on Hoolinyae's neck, the little device that hid Eenyo's collar from the satellite. Though it must be very difficult and dangerous, they
had
found ways to fight back. It
must
be possible. I had no idea how they had done it, but I would have plenty of time to think about it.

“Why didn't you tell me you were so angry with me about writing the book?” I asked.

Josephine sighed and leaned her head back against the wall with her eyes closed. “Does it matter now?”

“Yes,” I said.

Because it's not like she was going to get another chance to tell me anytime soon.

Josephine opened her eyes and watched the Krakkiluk ship getting closer.

“My dad didn't read it, you know,” she said. “You'd think . . . seeing as I was
in
it, he might have had a look. And he didn't watch any of the programs. He didn't . . .
ask me
about what happened on Mars. He said he was glad I was all right. But he didn't think of asking what it was
like
. These too.” She gestured at the gills under her hair. “He didn't notice, even though I had to have bandages on my neck for a month. When Lena told him, he said, ‘Isn't she rather young?' Like he didn't
know
. So . . . all that was going on. And there are all these people out
there who
did
read it, and they know things about me that he isn't interested in.”

“Okay, your dad
sucks
,” Carl announced rashly, which was pretty much what I'd been trying to stop myself from saying. I wished I
had
said it, now. “Not as bad as the Krakkiluks or Rasmus Trommler, but still pretty bad.”

“It's not really his fault,” said Josephine.

“Yes it
is
,” I said. “It's not
fair
.”

“He can't help it. It's the war. And what happened to my mother. Lena says he used to be different, when she was a little girl. When my mother was alive. But afterward he stopped being able to—well. Care.”

I'd spent a lot of the war missing my mum. But at least when it was over, she came
back
. I thought of her hugging me at the hospital, of me and Dad sitting with mugs of tea at the kitchen table, him coaxing me to keep writing things down until the bad dreams from Mars faded away. And then I thought of all that
not
happening.

“So I thought, if I could be . . . clever enough, if I could get into university now . . .” Josephine looked away, her mouth twisting.

“That he'd notice,” I said quietly.

“No. Well. Yes, maybe a bit. Mainly I thought I wouldn't have to live at home anymore. But I messed
up the exam and . . . you'd written a
book
. . . .”

I boggled a bit. It would never have occurred to me I could have done anything Josephine could feel jealous of.

“And I didn't tell you because . . . I didn't
want
to be angry with you. I kept trying not to be, but it wouldn't go away. But I thought . . . I was scared, if you knew, you'd stop being friends with me.”

“Oh,
Josephine
,” I said. “You are the
stupidest genius
.” And I lurched off the floor to hug her. “I'm sorry.” Why hadn't I just said that before? “I should have made sure you were okay with what I'd written about you.”

Josephine sighed and put her forehead against my shoulder. “Thank you,” she said, “I'm sorry too.

“It's okay,” I said.

“I'm not a genius. I can't think of anything we can do,” she admitted softly.

“You don't always have to. And I'd rather get sent off to some horrible alien planet than be dead. I know what
I'm
going to do: as long as I'm alive, I'll never stop trying to get away. And when I do, I'll never stop looking for you. For all of you. And I
will
write it all, wherever I am, so there. But you can be the first person who reads it.”

Josephine smiled with one corner of her mouth.
“All right, then. I won't stop trying either.”

“Nor shall I,” said Th
saaa
.

“Yeah, me too,” said Carl.

“Okay,” whispered Noel. “So we're all set.”

We were close enough to the Krakkiluk ship to see its flags stirring in the plumes of gas.

The door of the lounge opened again. I expected Trommler.

But instead a voice said “Papa?” and Christa peered around the door. Like Trommler, she'd put on some nice fresh clothes but still looked pale and rattled. The first things she saw were the Krakkiluks, and she shrieked and turned to run away.

“Christa!” Noel shouted. “Come back!”

She stopped in her tracks. Warily, she peeped back into the room. “Noel?” she said. “Are you okay?”