Stellarnet Rebel (4 page)

Clenching his fist, he pounded the table and growled,
“Wah!”
Then he swept his arms out, as if pushing away the terrible memory, and dropped his head into his hands. When Duin spoke again, his voice was low and strained. “That was more than two rain seasons—three years ago. I’ve searched, but have never found them. I assume they are on Tikat. Or…” He didn’t finish the thought.

“I am so sorry.” She offered him a handkerchief.

He took it. “What is this?”

“You’re upset.”

“I am. But, why the cloth? What does this mean to humans?”

“I thought you were crying.”

“Ah. No. Glin don’t cry. We don’t have tear ducts,” he explained, and shifted into a dispassionate, instructional tone. “We have a second eyelid which thickens in response to strong emotion. One of our…our…” He sighed and pulled out the translator, typing on it for a moment. “Evolutionary adaptations. But that’s very kind.” He tucked the handkerchief into the front of his suit, with his translator.

“We can stop, if you want to. I can post what we’ve discussed so far, and you could come back later.”

“Yes, I would like that very much. Thank you, J’ni. For the tea, the sorrow cloth and your sympathy.”

He stood up to leave, and she walked him to the door. “Duin, how do you live with this, all this loss, every day? How do you deal with the suffering and the injustice? I don’t know if I could.”

“You could,” he said with utmost confidence. “Because no matter how vile, how painful, how heartbreaking, you would not give in to despair. That would be handing your oppressors the one thing they cannot have without your permission.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Tikati can take away my family and friends, my world, even my freedom. But they cannot steal the love I possess for these. Love is the
only
thing the Tikati cannot take from me. And I will never let them have it,” he vowed. “Never.”

***

There was a time when Catholics in Ireland were prevented from practicing their religion, owning land or voting

“You can’t
own
land.” Duin had returned very early the next morning—or much later that night, depending on how one looked at it. Time in Asteria Colony was a relative thing.

Genny stopped typing. “There are billions of people and several corporations on Earth who would disagree with you. What
can
you own, then?”

“I own myself. Everything else is transient. Though, given the current situation with Tikat, my self possession is a dubious claim at best.” He chuckled. “Dubious,” he repeated, amused by the sound of the word.

“Doubtful, iffy, uncertain,” she said. He had asked her to improve his language skills by helping him relate synonyms. “So what about the land a house sits on? And the area around it? Who owns that? Who gets to use it?”

He took a drink from his teacup, which was filled with peppermint tea. “Everyone. No one. Glin move a lot. I’ve lived up and down the river, close and far from the river, sometimes
in
the river, depending on the cycle of the rain season or my family’s mood at the time.”

“Who manages the resources?”

“At the moment, the Tikati are
managing
to devastate them.”

Genny finished writing the paragraph.

There was a time when Catholics in Ireland were prevented from practicing their religion, voting, teaching or receiving an education, simply because they were Catholic. Similar injustices have been forced upon the Glin by the Tikati. Not because of their religion, but simply because they are Glin.

She stopped typing and asked, “Would you tell me more about your family, Duin?” She was curious, but didn’t want to upset him again.

He answered with the joy of any contented husband and father. “Ullu and I have seven descendants—five children and two grandchildren. So far. I might have a third, by now. I suspect Shahash was pregnant. She was getting a bit round and cranky, and always chewing on
nargit
.”

“Duin, how old are you?”

“Twenty-five rain seasons,” he said. “Forty years old.”

“You’re not old enough to have grandchildren.”

“Ullu had her first baby when I was in my tenth rain season.”

Punching the numbers on her calculator app, she said, “You were only fifteen, maybe sixteen years old?”

His mouth curved into a mischievous smile. “Yes, I was surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”

“Sooner? My parents were your age when they had
me
, and I’m their only child.”

“How long is a human lifetime?”

“Anywhere from eighty to a hundred and fifty, depending on how many gen-mods and regenerations a person can afford.”

“If a Glin lived to eighty years, that would be astonishing. Thirty-eight rain seasons, that’s about sixty years, is typically our limit. But a Glin is considered fortunate to reach even thirty rain seasons. I’m old, Genny.” He chuckled.

“You don’t look it.”

Now Duin laughed aloud. “Since I’m the only Glin you know, you have no basis for comparison. Please, do tell me I’m the most intelligent, wisest and fastest-swimming Glin, too.”

“You’re only eight years older than I am.”

“How many children do
you
have?” he asked.

“I don’t have any.”

“Truly? I thought you might have six or seven.”

“
Seven?
What makes you think I have seven kids?”

He cupped both of his hands to his chest and she needed no further explanation.

“Omigod. Males are all the same, whether they’re from Earth or outer space.”

“Well, you display yours rather prominently, I thought you were proud of them.” He saw the look on her face. “I’ve upset you.”

“No.”

“Is this not an appropriate topic of conversation among humans?”

“It depends on the circumstances.”

“On Glin, a female who has several children is respected for her wisdom and experience.”

“And the size of her rack.”

“Rack?”

“Chest. Boobs. Breasts.” She tried to find a word he might recognize.

Duin shrugged as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “They do get larger with each successive child. A female can’t have that many children and not know…well,
everything
. Judging by the women on Asteria, I assumed humans were extremely fertile. Though I’ve seen very few children here.”

“Big tits come standard with every female prenatal gen-mod.
Really
big tits cost extra. It has nothing to do with fertility.”

“I apologize for my misunderstanding.”

“I hope you haven’t been going around trying to strike up conversations about tits, Duin. That might explain why you’re so unpopular.”

“I rarely have conversations with anyone,” he said with great regret. “About
tits
,” he used her word, “or anything else.”

Before he left to do his daily stint in the Colony Square, she helped him choose a spot where he’d be seen on the netcams. Then she linked the live feed to her blog. When he was gone, she called Blaze.

“’Lo, Genny. Please don’t tell me you’ve found a mystery fungus growing in your garden.”

“No.”

“Good. How can I help you?” With a gloved hand, he smashed a large cockroach scuttling across his desk. “Fucking things,” he grumbled.

“The alien, Blaze.”

He nodded for several seconds as if he were composing a thorough reply, took a deep breath, and said, “I have no official statement.”

“How about an unofficial statement? Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

“The U.S. government, the UN and the ESCC are all well aware of the situation according to Duin,” said Blaze. “I’ve talked to him several times, myself. That creature is persistent as a rash at a hooker convention.”

“Then why hasn’t anything been done?”

“What do you suggest? I don’t have any spare scientists to send over there, and I don’t have the kind of fleet I’d need to engage in an interplanetary war. Hell, I don’t even have enough bitty barnacle-bots to plug up the oxy leaks around Asteria. We are a sneeze away from colony collapse, lord willing and the creek don’t rise. What am I supposed to do for Glin?”

“You could send food, help evacuate refugees…”

“To where?
Here?
”

“Somewhere. The Solar System? Earth?”

“Right, and the UN is going to allow that, just the way they’ve welcomed Duin with open arms. Who’s going to pay for it, Genny? And God alone knows what the hell Tikat will do if we get involved. I’ve been ordered to keep our heads down.”

“Whose orders? General Ostberg? The president? Who?”

Blaze dragged a hand down his face in exasperation. “Don’t you go over my head, Genny. They won’t like it, and neither will I.”

“I don’t care who I piss off, Blaze, I really don’t. I care about saving innocent lives. I thought the mission of the UN was to maintain peace and protect the victims of war.”

“Last time I checked, Glin was not a member of the UN.”

“Well, maybe it would be, if the assholes on Earth would accept Duin as an envoy.”

“We can’t risk creating an incident.” He parroted the phrase with practiced precision.

“It’s humanitarian aid, not an act of aggression.”

“They’re not human.”

“Which is the whole goddamn point, isn’t it?” She raged. “It’s easy to ignore the Glin when it’s only the Interplanetary Declaration of
Human
Rights that applies.”

“Look, Genny. I agree with you. It sucks a donkey’s balls. But I’m choking on plenty of crises right here. I’ve had a dozen deaths in the colony just this past week. I’ve got a recycling system that keeps breaking down, and unauthorized tins, stuffed nut-to-butt with colonists, in
extreme
violation of the Intergovernmental Space Colonization Agreement. My people are working double and triple time trying to tug, tie and tame all of these relos. I can’t leave them floating out there in space to die, can I?”

Before she could finish saying, “No,” he went on.

“I’m doing the bullshit shuffle to requisition additional resources and offset the imbalance this puts on the ecological integrity of the colony. Maybe you should go blog all
that
, and put some pressure on those hoity toity Consortium cocksuckers for me. Meanwhile, I don’t know what in Hector’s shithouse I can do for Glin, but if I think of anything, I will let you know.”

“I
will
blog all of that, Blaze, but do you realize that Duin is giving us some of the only freshwater they have left?”

“And we need it.”

“So do they.”

“I found him a compartment and gave him permission to do his ballyhoo in the Colony Square. Fuck me, Genny, but if you knew how many complaints I get about him, you’d understand what a generous man I really am.”

“There’s an alien in your stairwell,” said Seth, scowling at her from the wall of her compartment.

“Good morning, J’ni.” Duin waved over the Airman’s shoulder.

“It knows you?”

“Yes, he knows me.” She set down the teapot and headed to the door. “Don’t you follow my blog? I’ve been writing about him for the past three weeks.”

Seth wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something worse than the usual odor of the colony. “It’s bad enough I’m stationed on Asteria. I don’t want to read about it, too.”

She entered the hallway. Seth was standing at the stairwell door, blocking Duin.

“Wait a sec,” Seth said, dropping his arm and speaking to her face-to-face. “You’re blogging this thing?”

“His name is Duin. Duin, this is Seth.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Duin offered his webbed hand.

Seth’s good looks were marred by his grimace. He ignored Duin’s hand and dragged Genny to the opposite end of the hallway. Duin stepped over the threshold into the hall and let the door shut behind him.

“Seriously, Genny, what are you doing?”

“He’s an envoy. Ambassador. Representative,” she replied in a low voice, glancing down the hall at Duin, who was examining the rivets in the metal wall. “I interview him every day.”

“Here? In your compartment? Where I just spent the night? What if I catch something?” He wiped his hands on the front of his antibiotic shirt.

“Dr. Geber says that they don’t have diseases like we do. He thinks it’s because the RNA origin proteins of life on our planets are different. Or something like that. I don’t know. But don’t worry.”

“It gives me the heebs. How do you know it won’t eat you, or kill you and lay its eggs in your corpse?” Seth looked at her as if he expected her to erupt with a horde of extraterrestrial larvae at any moment.

A sharp snort came from Duin’s direction. Genny and Seth both looked at him. He’d moved away from the rivets and was fiddling with the Asternet on the wall. She wondered if he could hear them arguing. She hoped not.

“You’ve been watching too many horror vids,” she whispered. “And Glin don’t lay eggs. They’re mammals, sort of like dolphins, but more like us.”

“They’re not like us,” said Seth. He wasn’t whispering.

She didn’t like the direction of the conversation and didn’t want it to continue in front of Duin. “You’re going to be late.”

“I’m not leaving you here alone with it.”

Genny saw the concern on Seth’s face. He straightened to his full six-foot-two and thrust out his chest, glaring at Duin. Duin seemed oblivious, studying some windows on the wall. He was l’upping dolphins. Damn it, he
could
hear them.

This was silly. Seth should trust her. He should be trying to listen to her, understand and encourage her. At the very least, he should be reading her blog, if he really gave a shit.

“He’s not an ‘it,’ he’s my friend. If you read my posts you’d understand how much he needs my help. Our help. Earth’s help.”

“It’s not your friend, it’s a goddamn alien, Genny. It’s not natural.”

“He’s as
natural
on his world as we are on ours.”

“I mean, it’s not natural for you to be friends with it.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s…” He pointed at Duin, but seemed at a loss for words. He balled his hands in frustration, but his eyes softened when he looked at her. “
I’m
your friend. More than a friend, I hope.”

“So you want me to choose between you and my job? Or are you trying to make me choose between your fear and bigotry and the suffering of an entire world?”

“Fuck it,” he said, turning his back on her. “The
frog
matters more to you than
I
do.” He left through the other stairwell, so he didn’t have to walk past Duin.

She touched Seth’s name on her contacts list. “Seth, don’t be like that,” she said into her device. Opening a small map on her bracer, she saw his locator moving away from her block. “Seth?”

But he didn’t reply. Genny brushed her hand over her forearm. The map disappeared and the call disconnected. She walked back to her compartment door.

“Good morning, Duin,” she said as he followed her inside. He sat down in his usual chair and she poured him a cup of tea. Comments tickered across her wall.

Seth is a dick

He’s right, I’m sick of this alien shit.

fuk seth

If you don’t like her blog, don’t read it

<>

I <3 dolphins
 

“J’ni.” Duin said her name in his odd way. His eyes were filmed over with the white membrane of Glin tears.

“Duin, what’s wrong?” she asked, though she knew it had to be something he overheard.

“It is much easier to stand up to our enemies than to stand up to the ones we love. I’m quite moved. But I hope I haven’t upset your mate.”

“Mate?” She shook her head. “I’m not married.”

Several expressions crossed Duin’s face in succession. Surprise, thoughtfulness, amusement. He finally settled on concern. “I thought he loved you.”

Loved her? Did he? Seth never said he loved her. She cared about him, sure, and he was good in bed, but they were just friends. After the way he acted in the hall, though, she could see Duin’s point.

“I will understand if you want me to leave.” Duin studied her face while his eyes returned from milky to dark gray.

“No, stay,” she insisted. “I’ll work it out with Seth, later, when he’s not on duty. Don’t worry about it.” She sat beside Duin and opened several windows on the wall. “I want to show you what I found this morning. All of the updates we added to the Glin wiki files, they’re all gone.”

“Where would they go?”

“I don’t know. A previous version should be archived. All I’d have to do is go back and revert. But there’s nothing there. That takes serious hacking. The professional and/or terrorist kind.”

“Who would do that?”

“Take your pick,” she said, opening windows on the wall to display possibilities. “There are religious groups who think aliens are demonic. Governments that don’t want to become involved in the Glin-Tikat war. People who are afraid of you, or who don’t like you because you’re different.” She thought of Seth. “From now on, we’ll archive our updates on the INC website, and I’ll keep copies locally on the Asternet.”

“Very wise,” Duin agreed.

She switched on the compartment netcam to record their interview and flicked her finger over the tabletop, scrolling through her notes. “Here’s something I wanted to talk to you about. Two different ways of battling oppression, from two of the countries we discussed the other day. During Earth’s Industrial Era, the Irish Republican Army was an armed, militarized revolutionary organization. But, during the same period, India had an independence movement led by Mohandas Gandhi, who practiced only non-violent resistance. Both countries were successful in gaining their independence.”

“What would be an example of non-violent resistance?”

“Protests, marches, open defiance of the law. Ireland had hunger strikes.”

Duin shook his head. “Any peaceable, reasonable attempts to change the situation on Glin result in
relocations.
No arrests, no accusations, no witnesses, no judgment rendered by an
Anah Anah
. Glin are seized and taken to undisclosed locations. Tikat has left us no choice but violence.”

“Gandhi said, ‘An eye for an eye makes everyone blind.’”

“But the alternative is far worse. The alternative is that all
good
people will be blind, and only tyrants will see.” Duin slapped his hand on the table, making the cups rattle in their saucers. “I don’t want their eyes, I want their absence. Whether they get on their accursed ships and go away or whether they are dropped in a pool of flesh-eating
driznit
is up to them. But they must, they
will
, go.”

“Too many innocent lives are lost in violent struggles.”

“Those innocent lives will continue to be lost on Glin, regardless of whether we sit quiet while they round us up, or we poke them in the eye.” Duin jabbed at the air with his finger.

“Does it make any difference to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether they are destroyed by tyranny or in the cause of liberty?”

“It makes every difference,” he insisted.

“Why?”

“Do you want to be reborn into a world of tyranny and oppression, or do you want to be reborn into a free world?”

“Ooh, wait. That’s another topic.” She started typing, adding an update to the Glin wiki files. “The Glin believe in reincarnation?”

He tilted his head. “I don’t know.”

“That the soul is eternal, but moves through different bodies, living more than one lifetime.”

“Ah, yes.” He pulled out the translator. “How do you spell it?”

Genny told him, and he added it to the database. When he was finished, he slipped the device into the front of his suit. “The water teaches us: we are carried in the sea of life, until we pass the Last Wave. Then we are taken up into the Sky Ocean, only to be returned, one day, when the Great Rain falls.” Fingertips dancing downward, he mimicked raindrops.

“You believe that the souls of the Glin reside in the water?”

Chuckling, Duin shook his head. “Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s a metaphor, J’ni.”

Duin offered to deal with the discussions, email and comments that he inspired—and he was inspiring thousands. INC had already set up filters to sort her email, identify redundant keywords and rank topics of interest, so that he and Genny didn’t need to read every message. She gave him moderator access and authorship privileges on her blog. He also adopted her ten-fingered typing style, which had improved his speed to seventy wpm over his previous two-fingered thirty-two.

She left him working on the blog while she went out the back door into the communal garden she shared with her blockmates. Filtered light poured in through the ceiling and illuminated the sunflower wall, the trellises of beans and cucumbers, and the columns of strawberries and peas.

Genny loved the garden.

Asteria Colony always had light because the planet was tidally locked and did not rotate, so there was a constant supply of solar energy. The glass windows in the ceiling contained filters programmed to lighten and darken throughout the “day” to mimic Earth’s patterns. At 1200 colony time, the garden appeared to be lit in the full light of noon. At 2400 it was dark as night.

Automatic sprinklers did most of the watering, and pests and weeds were nonexistent. But there were extensive interrelated systems which were essential, and those systems required tending. The bee hives, soil sensors, aquaponic fish, nutrient-release systems, water recycling machines, microbe and mineral levels, and the block’s composter all had to be checked and maintained throughout the day. There was also the work of constant harvesting, replanting, weighing, recording and storing of the food products. The blockmates shared an app for tracking their garden data, food consumption and inventory. Any surpluses would be sold or traded through the Asternet or the Colony Square.

Genny was picking raspberries and singing to herself when she noticed Duin standing in the shadows under the hydroponic potatoes, watching her. Glin were hunter-gatherers. They did not have cities or cultivation, so gardening was yet another fascinating human technology to him, like the Stellarnet.

“I’m not s’posed to be eating them until they’re weighed and logged,” she admitted with blithe guilt. “But I can’t help it. Raspberries are my favorite. I just have to make sure I pick as many as I eat, then double the weight and manually input the data. Can you eat raspberries?” She picked one and offered it to him.

“Yes.” He took the fruit from her but didn’t eat it. Instead, he cradled it in his hand, holding it out into the light where it sparkled like a jewel.

“I’ll make us some raspberry leaf tea tomorrow.”

“I won’t be here tomorrow. I have to leave for a few days. Colonel Villanueva has asked for more water.”

“But that’s perfect. I can go with you and—”

“No. It’s much too dangerous, J’ni.”

“More dangerous than shifting space in a metal box and living on a planet without any atmosphere?”

“Much more.”

“More dangerous than the risk of becoming an alien egg sac?”

This made him smile, but it didn’t drive the seriousness from his eyes. “Much,
much
more.”

She felt a flutter of worry in the pit of her stomach. He was flying a stolen enemy ship to an occupied world, after all. “But you’ve done this before. So, it’s not
that
dangerous.”

“Of course.” It was said in a tone both consoling and hollow of conviction.

“Please be careful.” She didn’t know what else to say. She wanted to hug him, but she didn’t know if Glin hugged each other or what hugging meant to them. Instead, she placed her hand on his arm.

Duin looked at her hand and then looked into her eyes. “Before I leave, would you finish the song for me? You were singing about a flower and a river.”

“Oh, right. I’ll l’up it for you.” She looked up the Irish playlist on her bracer, but he covered the display with his hand.

“I want to hear
you
.”

“I’m no singer.”

“I heard otherwise. Or is this something like tits, which we should not discuss?”

“No.” She laughed. “I just feel silly singing to someone else.”

“Singing is the expression of our emotions. When mere speaking is not enough. It is nothing frivolous. Please.”

It was the “please” that moved her. She’d never heard it spoken with such need in all her life. She tried to remember where she’d left off, and began to sing.
“It’s not for the parting with my sister Kate; It’s not for the grief of my mother; It’s all for the loss of my bonny Irish lass; That my heart is breaking forever.”
Then she repeated the chorus Duin must have overheard.
“Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows, and fair is the lily of the valley. Clear is the water that flows from the Boyne. But my love is fairer than any.”