Randoms (25 page)

“You know, I'm really tired,” I told her. “Maybe another time.”

“Of course.” She smiled with all the warmth of a vampire. “I think it's time for the two of us to become friends. To trust each other.”

I felt sure that was never going to happen. “Okay,” I managed to say. “You betcha.”

“I look forward to it.” She put out her hand. “Friends?”

I wanted to walk away, to tell her I did not trust her and I never would. She'd proven she was my enemy, and now she was trying to separate me from the beings I most cared about on the station. I was never going to trust her, but I could not tell her so.

“Sure,” I managed, and I shook her hand, which was colder than Steve's reptilian grip.

She seemed pleased with herself. “Good night.”

I stood there, in shock, watching her walk away and disappear into her room. What had that been all about? Why was she suddenly trying to get me to trust her? I had no idea how I could make sense of it, but I knew I didn't believe it.

I sighed and then turned in the other direction, and there—close enough to have seen everything but far enough away not to have heard a word of it—was Tamret. The universe had taken the time and trouble to position her in exactly the spot where she could most effectively misread what had transpired between me and Ms. Price. Tamret's eyes were wide with disbelief or anger or confusion. She had seen me shaking hands with Ms. Price, my enemy and hers. I was once again, in Tamret's eyes, putting the members of my own species first and being chummy with the woman who wanted me to avoid the other randoms.

“Tamret,” I started to say, but her name caught in my throat and came out like a cough.

She turned and ran in the other direction.

I hurried after her, but by the time I reached the main junction, she was long gone, so I went back to my room before any more insanity could track me down.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I
wanted to hide from everyone and everything, but since that wasn't really an option, I hid from everyone and everything until after breakfast and then went off to the classroom. I showed up exactly on time, hoping the others would already be inside and seated so I could avoid conversation, but Ms. Price was waiting for me outside.

“Good morning, Zeke.” Her smiled was crooked and almost endearing in a reptilian sort of way. No, I take that back. Steve was endearing in a reptilian sort of way. Ms. Price was something else. I would settle for insectoid—at least until I had an insect friend.

“Hey,” I said, dazzling her with my linguistic charm.

I tried to walk past her, but she stood in front of the door. “I'm glad we had a chance to talk last night. I want to be sure you understand that I have a job to do, Zeke, and it isn't always easy.”

“I get it,” I said, cutting her off. I didn't want to hear her speeches. “You think I'm swell, but you don't want me having friends. Oh, and if it should prove to be in the best interests of the planet Earth to ship me off to be tortured and killed, you'll be first in line with the packing tape.”

“Not first in line,” she said.

“You big softie,” I said, and made my way into the classroom.

•   •   •

Things with Tamret were not so easily resolved. She barely looked at me during class, and she sat with me and Steve for lunch, but she didn't say more than three words. Steve, somewhat oblivious to mammalian moods, talked cheerfully about our victory over the other humans the night before.

After she finished picking at her food, Tamret excused herself and began to walk away. I hurried after her. “I want to talk to you about what you saw, or what you think you saw, last night. Ms. Price and I aren't friends. She just kind of came up to me.”

She did not slow her pace. She may have quickened it. “It's not my business what you do with the members of your own species. I know how important they are to you.”

I put a hand on Tamret's arm, and she shrugged me off, but at least she stopped. “I get that it looked like we were being all chummy, but we weren't.”

“I'll tell you what it looked like,” Tamret said. “It looked like there is no amount of abuse you won't take from someone as long as they come from your own world. That woman wants nothing more than to throw you to the Phands, and she wants to keep you away from the only beings who care what happens to you. But even after all that, you're still trying to get on her good side.”

“I was not,” I insisted. “I don't want anything to do with her.”

“And what about Nayana, who's so beautiful? Are you still ready to run off with her?”

“You asked me if she was pretty for our species, and I told you. But so what? Some people are pretty, but I still don't like her, because she's unpleasant.”

“
I'm
unpleasant!” she snapped.

“Not to me, you're not,” I said quietly.

That seemed to have some effect on her. She lowered her defenses, if only slightly.

“I like you, Tamret,” I told her. I wasn't admitting to anything, but I was still saying I liked her, and that admission made the rest of it somehow easier. The words just came out of my mouth before I could stop them. “I don't know how to be any clearer about it. I don't know why you're so angry with me.”

She took a step back, and she looked sad, which was not the reaction I'd been hoping for. “I don't think you know what you feel. What I do know is this—you never miss a chance to try and get closer to the people who treat you like you're garbage. You are so desperate to belong with them that you don't care how they treat you or how they treat us.”

“Of course I care, but you don't understand what it's like to be totally shut out.”

“Don't I?” she asked.

Okay, that was stupid. “Maybe,” I attempted, “it's not the same with your kind, but human beings are social creatures. On my world, cats don't live in groups, so maybe—”

Her eyes went wide, and I could see that the word “cat” had produced some kind of unflattering translation. “Is that what I am to you? Some kind of domesticated animal?”

“That's not what I'm saying. It's just that we need to be part of a group, and I don't think it's so terrible that I want to be part of my group.”

She took a step back, like she didn't trust herself not to hurt me. Her jaw jutted out, her whiskers twitched, and her eyes tightened to narrow little slits. “That's your problem, Zeke. That's why I'm so angry with you. You
are
part of a group. Steve
and I are your group, but to you it's just a temporary arrangement until the beings from your planet take you back.”

“That's not true,” I said, but I wasn't sure now. Was she right? Would I have dropped the randoms if the rest of the humans had invited me in? Would I have lost interest in Tamret if Nayana had liked me? I honestly didn't know how I would have felt in that first week on the station, but now things were different. There was no way I could ever imagine choosing to spend time with the other humans over Steve and Tamret, who had proved themselves the best friends I'd ever had. I knew that was true, but I wished the other humans would accept me as one of them. I didn't want to choose one group over the other. I didn't want to be rejected by any of them.

I was certain that was how I felt, but Tamret had seen my face, my moment of indecision. She was walking away, and once again, I wanted to go after her but there was nothing I could say that would make a bit of difference.

•   •   •

Over the next few days, I continued to log as many hours as I could in the flight sims and the game room. I knew that Tamret was also spending time in the computer lab, working on programming and, I hoped, nothing illegal. I continued to gain XP, and now had enough points to move up to level thirteen, though I kept myself at level nine so I wouldn't freak out the other humans, who were all tens. I was tempted to put points in strength, but I stuck with the starship-pilot track and continued with agility, intellect, and vision, with a couple of points in health. Steve and Tamret were also at nines, but I knew Steve was an actual twelve, well above the rest of the Ish-hi. Tamret refused to tell us how many XP she'd racked up.

About a week after the disastrous incident in the flight simulator, Tamret showed up in the cafeteria just as Steve and I were finishing breakfast. She looked tired. Her fur was a little matted, and her hair was unkempt. Her clothes were wrinkled, like she'd slept in them, or hadn't slept at all, and her eyes were streaked with red.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I was up all night working on something,” she said, “and I don't think any of us are okay. You both need to come with me.”

We followed her outside to a courtyard, where Hluh was sitting on a bench by a fountain, waiting for us. She had her data-bracelet keyboard materialized, and she was busy typing away. “You might as well sit down, not that it matters. You're all pretty much doomed.”

Under the circumstances, sitting seemed liked good advice. Tamret and I sat on the bench, on opposite sides of Hluh. There had been room next to me, and I'd been hoping she would sit near me. If I were doomed, I'd rather be doomed next to her.

“Since when are the two of you friends?” I asked.

“Oh, we're not friends,” Hluh said. “I don't much like Tamret. She's too moody.”

“But I'm useful, apparently,” Tamret added.

“Yes, she has some remarkable computer skills, and she's been helping me look into these matters.” Hluh's fingers skittered over her virtual keyboard and called up a file on the selection committee. It was just a bunch of names in their indigenous alphabets or pictograms or whatever. If I looked at them for another few seconds, they would transliterate, but I couldn't be bothered. The names of a bunch of dead aliens, no matter how important they'd been in choosing me, wouldn't much matter.

“What do you know about them?” Hluh asked.

“The selection committee usually oversees the initiation process,” Steve said. He was still standing, but leaning back slightly on his tail. “This time they're not around.”

“And do you know why they aren't around?”

“They were killed,” I said. “Some kind of space attack or accident.”

“Are you sure about that?” Hluh asked.

I tried to think what Dr. Roop had said, but I couldn't remember exactly. “What are you trying to tell us?”

“I checked out the official news stories. I sent copies of some articles and video feeds to your data accounts if you want to take a look, but they're vague. The committee was on its way from scouting out a small world when their ship was attacked. The articles don't say by whom. It's implied that pirates got them.”

“Wouldn't that be unusual?” I asked.

“Unusual, but it is possible.” Hluh said. “Confederation space is well patrolled, but there is the occasional renegade or desperate refugee from Phandic space. The point is, what happened to the committee is left unclear.”

“Maybe no one knows,” Steve said. “Space is big. You can't know everything that happens, right?”

Hluh continued to type, and the holographic image was suddenly flashing with warnings about security and restricted access. “That's true, but my point is that everything to do with all five of these beings has since been buried or classified. Sure, I can find public information about them, articles about their elections, opinion pieces they wrote, images and interviews and whatever, but if you go deeper, into the government records,
everything has been taken out of the public domain and seriously encrypted. I can't gain access, but I know who is blocking the way: the Xeno-Affairs Judicial Council. Chief Justice Junup has made it impossible for anyone to learn anything about what happened to the selection committee.”

“Which is why Hluh messaged me,” Tamret said.

“I suspected Tamret would have no problem breaking every law there is protecting the privacy of information,” Hluh said. “She is both skilled and immoral.”

“And awesome,” Tamret concurred. “But I couldn't gain access to any of the secret files concerning the selection committee. It was all too encrypted.”

“Too encrypted for you, ducky?” Steve asked.

This earned Steve a smile. I wished it had been mine. “You have to understand how these Confederation types think,” Tamret explained. “To them a sign that says ‘do not enter' has the same effect as a high-security fence. That's already all they need, but this time they actually put safeguards on their files. The truth is, I could get around the encryption and gain access to the files without too much effort, but I would set off a zillion alarms, and they'd trace the hack to me within a few hours. I want to know what's in those files, but not enough to get kicked out of the Confederation.”

“Can I point out that you're not supposed to be hacking?” I said. “Hluh, you can't let her do this for you.”

“It was her choice,” Hluh said.

“After you asked her,” I snapped. “You're taking advantage of her, and you don't care if she gets caught. It won't bother you.”

“Should it?” Hluh asked.

“The point,” said Tamret, “is that there is information out there the judicial council doesn't want known, and whatever it is, it's under the absolute highest level of government secrecy.”

“I don't think any of you are here by accident,” Hluh said. “And I don't think the committee disappeared because of a chance act of aggression.”

“That's not good,” Steve said.

“What?” I asked.

“Think about it,” he said. “These blokes have an open and free society, so why conceal information?”

“They're obviously trying to hide some sort of blunder,” Hluh said.

“How could the selection committee be a blunder?” I asked.

“Oh no.” Genuine worry clouded Tamret's face.

“Will you guys tell me what's going on? I don't get it.”

“This is bad,” Steve said. “The committee chooses its randoms not randomly, and except in your case, we are all fairly shady characters. Then the committee is attacked, and the government classifies and encrypts its own records about the committee. I can't help but think that maybe the Confederation itself took them out.”

“But why?” I asked. Then the answer occurred to me. “Oh no,” I added to the chorus. “They were Phandic spies, weren't they?”

Steve nodded. “That's what I'm thinking. It makes sense.”

“Then that means we weren't chosen to help our worlds join the Confederation,” I said. “We were recruited to help the Phands.”

“And the Confederation knows that,” Tamret said.

“I think you are drawing unwarranted conclusions,” Hluh
said. “You have been here for weeks. Has anyone from the Phandic Empire tried to contact you or recruit you?”

“No,” I said, but I was thinking that maybe the Phands had been keeping an eye on Earth for a while. Their ships were flying saucers, after all, which were what most people reported when they claimed to have had contact with aliens. Maybe just like the Confederation had been seeding its culture in Earth's science fiction, the Phands had been scouting my home world as well. Did the Confederation know that? If they were to find out, would that make them suspect me?

“Any of the rest of you?” Hluh asked. “Have you had any contact with the Phands?”

“No,” Steve said, “but if they had been planning on recruiting us, it could be that Zeke's destruction of their ship may have made them rethink their approach.”

“I am not convinced,” Hluh said. “Even if Zeke angered them by destroying that ship, it would not alter their position if they had invested time and agents in putting you in place. You may have been chosen to serve the Phands, but you may have been chosen for some other, less menacing reason. Either way, it doesn't change the fundamental truth about your situation.”