Damocles (34 page)

Loul leaned in to see the picture more clearly. “I think that’s a female.” He nudged Meg with his shoulder. “Only Rarenson on ship? One Urfer?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit. Nobody flies a mission with just six people.”

Hark snorted. “And we know this because we’ve done so many missions. Oh that’s right. We can’t even get out of the atmosphere.”

While The Searcher shouted directions to his cameraman to resituate himself, Meg flipped the light screen up once more, only this time she used it to wall the angry reporter away from the table. When he saw the light box swing up in his direction, his mouth dropped open. When Meg ran her fingers along the control slide, making the screen opaque, he growled.

“Meg no talk to Hatador. Hatador talk much…big.” She smiled at the group.

Reno Dado smiled back. “He does talk too big. Too loud.”

They could see his raised fists behind the screen. Loul snickered. “How long do you think it’ll take him to figure out that the screen is just light? That he can stick his head through it? We’ve been moving through it the whole time.”

“I’m not going to tell him,” Po said. “It is kind of cool that he came, though.”

“Mr. Pell!” The Searcher resorted to shouting as if from a deep hole. “Ask her how many ships there are. Ask her how they plan to disarm our military forces. Ask them how many of us
they plan to spare? Ask her, Mr. Pell. See if she’ll tell you the truth!”

“Can I?” Po leaned forward on his forearms to better see Meg’s face. “Can I ask you a question, Meg? Will you tell me the truth?”

“Meg talk Po yes good/okay.”

Po stared at her face, his eyes moving over her hair and the long, narrow cheeks. “Meg, can I see your ship?”

Well that hadn’t gone as planned. That Hatador fellow, whoever he was, turned the whole happy occasion on its ear. The weird thing was that she kind of liked the guy.
Liked
may not have been the right word. She kind of understood him. There was something familiar about him, about his attitude and his stance and his persistence. In the whirlwind of this entire experience, it had occurred to Meg more than once to wonder why Loul and his people weren’t more curious about them. Sure, they had examined them and shared information. They had brought what looked like an entire army to guard them, or maybe to protect themselves. But even with Baddo and the black-shirt crews, with the generals and the press conferences, the Dideto as a whole were just so polite. It was kind of unnerving.

Meg kept thinking about Prader’s comment that if their positions were switched, if the Dideto had approached from the sky, Earther forces would probably have shot them before they made landfall. Cho hadn’t found the jokes about dissection and experimentation in the least amusing, and she knew it was because he didn’t find the idea too far-fetched. At least not from an Earther standpoint. But here on Didet, five strange creatures
had dropped from the sky with a sixth circling the planet, and only this Hatador fellow seemed inclined to shake his fist and demand answers.

Not that she wasn’t thankful. Heaven knew she’d stretched the bounds of even Loul’s wide trust by not telling him about Aaronson and the
Damocles
. But even knowing how shocked he must have been when Hatador told him about the ship coming into a detectable orbit, still Loul had trusted her. Still he had given her the benefit of the doubt. It sounded like even his friends did. Would she have done the same? A diplomat and protocol specialist, would she have stuck with her gut even when all the evidence pointed to signs that her contact had been hiding information? She didn’t want to think about that.

What she had to face now was that Hatador wasn’t going to hide behind that screen forever. (It did make her laugh that he couldn’t figure out the barricade was nothing but light. He might be persistent and nosy, but clearly he was no genius.) Loul and his friends were discussing something, and now it looked like Po wanted to see the ship. The girl cut him off after that question and another hurried discussion arose. All four leaned forward on their arms, their thrums back in that mesmerizing harmony. She wished she could understand what they talked about. ProLingLang picked up a few phrases but she couldn’t make sense of them. Family was mentioned. The generals came up, as did the wind truck. Hark seemed displeased when he mentioned
tut
, but one word kept tripping up the translation. It had to be a misunderstanding, a homonym of some sort, but it sounded like they kept referring to something purple.

She just couldn’t be as polite as the Dideto. If the
Damocles
had been spotted, Captain Wagner and the crew were no doubt facing tough questions. She had to get back to the landing site. Plus, depending on how the Chelyan crystal was recuperating
and how well Jefferson’s quest for Class IV silicates was going, she might have plenty of time to chitchat with Loul and his friends, more time than she ever dreamed of having. So whatever purple thing they were discussing was going to have to wait.

“Loul.” She put her hand on his wrist, stopping him midgesture. “Meg go back. Meg go to Urfers. Meg need/want go back.” She pointed to the countdown clock on the screen. It wasn’t counting down anything right now on her screen, but he knew what it meant.

Po leaned in close. “Meg? Po go with Meg to Urfers?”

“Yes.”

Loul had a lot to say to that, his thrum hitching and his knuckles grinding into the table. From the way he punched the air toward the guards lined up behind the still-shouting Hatador, she guessed he thought they might not be keen to the idea.

“Why Po not go? Po and Loul Dideto? Yes? All go with Meg Loul.”

She didn’t need to see Loul’s hand on the screen to see his maybe face. He drew into himself when he spoke. “Is not okay/bad to generals, no?” She heard the collective thrum soften, and to her untrained ear it sounded like a sigh. It wasn’t a happy sound.

“Loul talk is good/okay. Loul need/want Dideto go with?”

He tapped his knuckles. Before he could start to explain why it couldn’t happen, and Meg had a pretty good idea what he was going to say, she reached past him and drew back the light screen. Hatador toppled onto the table, his face and his lips shiny with spit.

“Hatador go with Dideto? Yes? See Urfers?”

Loul nearly choked, his thrum hiccupping, and Meg saw the gazes of his friends fall away. Hatador ground out something between his teeth, his tone rough. She picked out the words
generals
and
guns
and a reference to something black and purple. Feeling just overwhelmed enough to risk being cocky on Loul’s behalf, Meg played her bluff.

“Loul talk okay/good is okay/good. Loul talk generals. Generals talk yes. Yes?”

All eyes watched her. Hatador seemed the first to get her meaning. Keeping her tone as matter-of-fact as she could manage, unnecessary since even Loul probably couldn’t tell the difference, she explained the situation to Loul’s friends the way she wanted them to see it, the way she believed it should have been anyway.

“Loul talk yes and generals talk no—this is yes. Loul talk no and generals talk yes—this is no. Yes? Loul talk. Generals hear. Urfers hear. Loul is—” She plucked at the front of her shirt the way she’d seen Loul do in the wind truck when he’d mentioned the black-shirt crews. She hoped she had it right, that the gesture meant important, not pompous or abusive. His three friends sat back a bit, their eyes wide. Hatador smiled another sharp smile. Loul seemed the last to absorb her message. She brought it home.

“Loul has wind truck. Loul talk all go is good/okay, all go. Is good/okay, Loul?”

Loul’s mouth opened and closed several times. Hatador punched his arm softly, pushing him back into the booth. Loul gripped the table and then pounded his knuckles.

“Is good/okay.”

He didn’t know how it happened or how he had pulled it off or what was going to be waiting for him when they landed, but somehow he found himself loading his friends and The Searcher
onto the airvan, followed by Meg and only four of the guards who now had seats. He drew the line at the cameraman, insisting the outside media crossed the lines of security. The Searcher pulled out a small handheld box camera that Loul approved with authority that he came nowhere near possessing.

Everyone seemed to take it in stride, accepting his instructions and following his orders. The soldiers had balked at first, but with all eyes, including Meg’s, on him, he’d held his ground and ordered the remaining guards to head back to the landing site by car. He did catch Hark throwing him a side-eye once or twice, biting back a laugh of disbelief, and he knew his best friend could sense that Loul was just in over his head. But bluffing or not, they were all in an airvan with armed guards and an alien flying over Cartar and heading for the spaceship at the Roana Temple as the sky turned bluer and bluer. Even Hark couldn’t argue with those facts.

General Ada seemed prepared to argue, however, when they touched down on the edge of the landing site. He’d come out by himself to meet the airvan, the guards obviously having radioed ahead to prepare him. Anger flew off him like sparks as he bellowed “what the hell” and “are you out of your mind” at Loul multiple times in no discernible order. It was as if his rage had scrambled his meaning, overwhelming all need to communicate anything but loud bursts of sound. Loul knew he’d have enough of this to spare for possibly the rest of his life, so instead he concentrated on helping the still-smiling Meg from the airvan, followed by a grinning Hark, an opened-mouthed Po, the smirking Searcher, and, funniest of all, the lovely Reno Dado, who actually held up her hand to silence the general while she finished her phone call with her mother.

“Okay,” Reno Dado said, turning off her phone and slipping it into her pocket. “Mom is making our apologies to your mother.
I told her that while the Purpling may happen only a few times in our lives, experiencing it at the Roana Temple with extraterrestrials was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. She sends her love and said she’ll save you a big bowl of
checha
soup, but only if you promise to take lots of pictures. You know Mom. She’s a nut for her photo albums. What is that man yelling about?”

“That’s General Ada,” Loul said, leaning in under the pretense of being heard over the red-faced man’s shouts. In fact, he wanted, as always, to catch a whiff of Reno Dado’s skin. “He’s one of the ranking generals on-site and he’s a little pissed that I brought unauthorized civilians inside the barricade. You know, national security.”

Reno Dado smiled at him with a slight tease in her eyes. “Well, Meg says you’re the ranking figure on the site. Meg says they do what you say, right? After all, you’re Loul Pell. You don’t need a black shirt to be boss, do ya?” She bumped him with her shoulder, making him laugh. Her fingers brushed against the inside of his wrist. “I know I’ve always teased you about all this alien stuff. I mean with Po being Po how could I help it?”

She ducked her head and Loul thought the blush on the edges of her face might be from more than just the change in the light. “But part of me always sort of hoped you were right. I spend all day long doing these boring finance transfers, and when I would hear you all talking about it, when I’d hear all those ideas you had, I just…I’m just really glad you were right.” She squeezed his wrist before stepping away and laughing. “Now let’s go see that spaceship before Po pees in his pants.”

Po charged ahead like a Pummel star, almost in full crouch from his excitement. He waved his fists and yelled out descriptions even though Loul stood less than five feet from him. When they cleared the inner barricade and the ruins of the temple came into sight, complete with the Urfers’ spaceship perched
atop it, even Po fell silent. Reno Dado gripped his arm, and Hark dropped into a deep, breathless crouch.

The Searcher broke the silence. “The Roana Temple. They had to have known where to land. This can’t be a coincidence that they would choose to land on the Sea Gods’ footstep.”

“They haven’t really explained why they landed here. I mean, they’ve barely explained why they landed on Didet at all.” Loul watched the reporter gaze at the ship. “You don’t really think they’re trying to invade, do you? Not really, right?”

“I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve had a chance to see for myself.”

“I think you’ll be surprised at what you see. They’re very peaceful people.” Loul walked closer to the site, more intent on watching his friends’ reactions than noticing the change in demeanor of the workers around him. He had just noticed the Effans huddled together, rocking back and forth in distress when he heard one of the Urfers shout Meg’s name louder than he’d heard any Urfer speak so far. Meg jumped at the sound, running ahead to her crew.

Po watched her run, making sounds of awe at the incredible distance her long, spindly legs could cover. “Look at that! How do they keep their legs from snapping at that speed? And what’s that one doing? What’s that tool? Is that tool? Or a gun? What’s it doing? Why is it hitting the temple? Hey!”

His shout mingled with others who rushed forward toward the ship in outrage. One of the Urfers, Cheffson it looked like, was swinging a heavy metal bar over and over against the edge of the slab beneath the ship. He made a high-pitched, harsh sound as the metal made contact again and again against the tan rock, dust and pebbles flying everywhere. Cracks snaked across the surface of the slab as he continued to hammer with the bar. Two of Kik’s crew rushed forward, shocked into action
at the desecration of the sacred site. Mil reached the Urfer first, crashing into the alien at stomach level, sending the long-legged creature to the ground and the metal bar flying.