Tin Star Page 2

  It was a sight to see.

  The ship had five shiny points, its metal glinting in the glare of the weak sun. It looked like a tin star, the kind I had seen in history books, the kind that officers of the law wore. I managed to lift my hand, as though to touch the ship, before it vanished from sight.

  Then, the ship was gone, and so was my family.

  They had all left me here, on the floor of the Yertina Feray space station.

  That knowledge—that I was utterly alone—felt sharper than the beating. It made the pain in my body intolerable.

  Everything—the hangar, the window, and the ship’s fading streak of silver—went black.

  2

  Unconsciousness did not last long.

  It was the pain that woke me. My body ached. My lungs burned. My eyes were swollen shut. I was aware of some aliens moving around me. If I had the standard-issue nanites swimming inside of me, I would have been able to breathe the station’s base atmosphere: the nanites would have worked to adjust the mix my Human body needed by assimilating the gases that my lungs couldn’t process. Some nanites would have made their way to my brain to attach themselves to my cerebral cortex, working with my current language skills to improve and provide better translation of Universal Galactic when it was being spoken.

  All at once, one of the aliens let out a noise, and I knew that I’d been discovered.

  I stayed as still as I could.

  I felt a poke. Then another poke.

  I had heard somewhere that if you did not know who was around you, it was always best to play dead. Doing so had already saved me. It did not take them long to see that I had nothing on me to steal. After that, I was someone else’s problem and so they stopped prodding me and went back to their business of taking the grain that was supposed to be seeded on a new planet. My new planet. But I was helpless. All I could do was listen in frustration as the creatures spoke in their native language among themselves.

  As they left with the cargo, I wondered if Earth grains were valuable to other species. It dawned on me that Brother Blue had perhaps sold the grain to these aliens for profit.

  I lost consciousness again and awoke later to discover more aliens surrounding me. I willed myself to understand what the aliens were saying. I concentrated. I still had so much Universal Galactic to learn.

  I was certain that they were talking about me. Perhaps negotiating over my body. That made me frightened. Maybe it was true that aliens harvested Humans. That was the rumor on Earth. My interactions with aliens so far made me not believe it. We Humans were disliked, it was true, but this was because of the Human wanderers. We colonists were different than they were, and I had seen no evidence that aliens were the monsters that Brother Blue or ignorant Earthlings said they were.

  “Dead?” I understood that word, it was said by the one who seemed to be in charge.

  When my mother first committed us to becoming colonists on the Prairie Rose, I would often steal away to the library and listen to all the data reels of Universal Galactic I could find. I had learned some in spite of the language’s difficulties, but the accents were tricky and varied. Meaning could be altered by an inflection or a pitch.

  I only understood snippets of what the other alien said. I could tell from his clicks and thrums that he was a bug-like creature. The clicks and thrums made his Universal Galactic even harder to understand without the nanites.

  “… not an expert on Human … from the state of it … usually one solid color … blues and reds and yellows … puffiness … normal … eyes are closed … sleep or death…”

  It was too hard. I wanted to be where I should be—in a bunk on a colony ship—uncomfortable, but heading toward a new home on Beta Granade with my family. If I had not made myself so useful to Brother Blue with my limited language skills, then I could have soon been standing on a new planet, with dirt in my hands, planting seeds, building a new home. Instead, I was crumpled and broken on a cold space station floor.

  As I struggled to follow the conversation happening above me, I couldn’t help but think that not giving the translator and breathing nanites to the colonists or letting us learn Universal Galactic was another way for Brother Blue to keep us all under control. If we could not understand, then we could do nothing but follow. I was too inquisitive. I had always been so. My father had said it was a gift. My mother had warned me when we joined the Children of Earth to keep it in check.

  The aliens were speaking quickly and using slang, so I couldn’t be sure of anything I was hearing but finally I was able to follow again.

  “You weren’t working the docks, looking for work?” the one with the more melodic voice said.

  “No … Humans came at once … Ship … airlock … the way that they sound … vibration … voices … my ears … I left … they were gone … cargo … others … then nothing … gone…”

  I tried to open my eyes; they barely moved, but through the blur I could see a few of the aliens as they moved toward me. Pain flooded my body as they lifted me onto a stretcher. This was my only chance to do something. My tongue felt too swollen to form words. I wasn’t even sure that I would be understood. But I had to try.

  “Wait,” I said in thick Universal Galactic. “Wait.”

  To my ears it sounded less like a word and more like an undead moan.

  “Ahhh!” the bug-like alien screamed. “That frequency! Terrible. I hate them. I hate Humans.”

  “That thing is alive,” the other alien said. He was leaning in very closely to me. He was looking in my eyes, touching my skin, and he felt that I was still warm. He was a Loor, one of the Major Species. I could tell by his antennae. They were folded toward my face, almost touching my skin. “Get the doctor.”

  I could feel the aliens’ mood change. Whereas before they were just doing their job, they now moved around with new urgency. I sank back into the stretcher. I’d announced myself. Everyone I knew in the Children of Earth said that aliens were not to be trusted. But it was out of my hands now. They would either finish me off, or save me.

  The Loor put a nose mask on my face, and when the air hit me, I could breathe easier. It felt sweet. My mind cleared, and I was better able to follow the Universal Galactic.

  “I’ll have to contact the Earth representative at the League of Worlds,” the Loor said. “That means datawork.”

  “Do they even have one?” I heard someone else ask. “I thought they were isolationists?”

  “Things are always changing with these Minor Species,” the Loor said.

  “Too bad it’s not dead,” the bug-like creature said. I wondered if he saw me as a meal.

  “If the body had fallen a bit closer to the waste disposal, I would have pushed it in and been rid of it. I don’t like to deal with the Humans,” the Loor said.

  “They are a mostly unknown species.”

  “But they’re always roaming.”

  The doctor came and examined me. I kept still on the gurney.

  “Alive,” the doctor said. “Alive.”

  “Bring it to the med bay,” the one in charge said.

  I felt the stretcher lift up and move. After hours of darkness and pain, I could feel the tiniest spark of life in me.

  * * *

  I awoke, submerged partway in a tank of warm water, surrounded by thousands of tiny water creatures. The water was warm, and the creatures came and kissed my skin. After the cold of the Prairie Rose, the floor of the cargo bay, the tasteless food, and the endless boredom of the voyage, I finally felt something akin to contentment. For a moment, I could almost believe that someone had come to help me and thus, the universe had answered my call.

  The tank was perfectly adjusted for Human atmosphere and gravity. I floated. It was too blissful. I wondered how far along the Prairie Rose was on its journey. I wondered how long it would take me to catch up to them. I wondered if my family missed me as much as I missed them.

  I opened my eyes. Through the tank I could see three aliens. Two were in beds. One was holding an instrument. I recognized her—although I couldn’t really be sure of the gender—as the doctor who had declared me alive.

  She had four arms, a pointy chin, and a pointy head. The doctor was extremely thin, like a walking stick. She had one of her hands on the forehead of the patient in the bed, another entering something onto a keypad, while another was tapping her hip. I recognized her from my studies as a Per, another one of the Major Species. As a Human, I was considered a Minor Species, or maybe even less than Minor. The difference between Major and Minor had to do with how long you’d been a spacefaring race and how many colonies a civilization had out in the stars. You had to have more than a dozen to be considered Major.

  The doctor noticed that I was awake, and she took her free hand and through a flap in the tank wall injected me with a hypo. I slid back to sleep, peacefully dreaming of stars and the colony that I would help build.

  * * *

  I felt warm. Where was I again?

  Perhaps the hand that pressed on my forehead was my mother’s hand. Perhaps I had just been sick. Gotten a flu or eaten something disagreeable. Perhaps I was already there on Beta Granade, in a fevered sweat. Perhaps everything else that had happened that I was suddenly remembering had only been a nightmare.

  Perhaps.

  I opened my eyes again and saw the door slide open. An alien in a uniform came in. It was the Loor, the most Human-looking of all the alien species. They were taller and thinner with longer extremities than Humans. They had broad shoulders, short necks, and thick antennae on the tops of their heads. Between the antennae and above the small hairline was a small widow’s peak of pale skin. The color varied from Loor to Loor. I recognized him when he spoke as the alien who was giving orders when they found me and declared me alive.

  Seeing him reminded me that I was still on the Yertina Feray. I had only been dreaming that everything was fine. I had only been wishing. I closed my eyes to make my reality untrue for a moment longer.

  “How is she? Is she able to talk?” he asked.

  “The patient is making adequate progress but is not yet all better,” the doctor said.

  “When can she leave here?”

  I could feel the weight of his glare through the envirotank. I listened.

  “Perhaps soon,” the doctor said.

  “You’ve been saying that for weeks now and yet, here she still is.”

  “Humans, very tricky. I am not familiar with their recovery times. I am doing the best I can. As you know, we’re a sparsely populated station and I do not have an adequate staff.”

  “Release her tomorrow and send her to me,” he said.

  He left the room. The last of the warmth I felt from the dream slipped away. I opened my eyes and saw the doctor as she came over to me with an injection.

  “No,” I said. “No.”

  The doctor smiled and put one of her hands through the flap and placed it on my head, stroking me, as though I were a dog or a cat, and then I felt the prick of a needle.

  “You have a little fight in you,” the doctor said. “No matter what species, that is always a good sign.”

  “Something is wrong,” I said thickly, hoping my accent was acceptable as I slid into unconsciousness.

  “Yes, but I do not know the details. And now it seems as though there is nothing more that I can do for you, Human.”

  “Tula,” I said. “My name is Tula.”

  The doctor smiled and then moved away. Whatever care she had given, she was done now. I was here on my own.

  3

  Constable Tournour’s office was bright, white, and spare. He sat at his desk, empty of anything except for a single, small, flowering plant, which I knew from my limited exposure to space travel was a sign of wealth. Plants on a space station were rare, except in arboretums. Perhaps it was a payoff. It didn’t matter. It meant that though he was a low-ranking constable, he had power.

  Behind him, through the window, I could see the planet that the Yertina Feray station was orbiting had come into view. I’d forgotten the planet’s name but knew that it was smaller than Earth. It was a sickly gray color except for a strange rust-colored belt around its center on one of the continents. All I remembered was that whatever had been mined there in the past had long ago been depleted. The planet was inhospitable. No one lived there. No one mined there anymore. It used to be the reason why this station was so important. Now it was the reason why the Yertina Feray was on a little-used trade route. No one came here, unless they were lost or in trouble.

  We had been detoured here with mechanical difficulties. What was it Brother Blue had said? An unexpected glitch.

  Until Constable Tournour began speaking in rapid Universal Galactic, he seemed almost familiar. It wasn’t just that the Loor carried themselves the same as Humans, it was that their eyes were not so alien as the others’ were. Of course, his antennae and lack of eyebrows brought home the fact that Tournour was not at all Human.

  “Please speak slowly,” I said. “I have no nanites.”

  Tournour stared at me. He squared his broad shoulders. And then he began again slowly.

  “You’d have been better off dead,” he said.

  “I don’t think I agree with that,” I said.

  “You will,” he said.

  I said nothing. He intimidated me. I couldn’t look at him, so I looked at the plant and its yellow flower. It was brighter than the yellow suns I used to draw when I was a little girl.

  “No one claims that you are missing,” Tournour said.

  “I came here with the Children of Earth colonists on the Prairie Rose; we were heading to Beta Granade when we ran into engine trouble. We were docked here for repairs. You must have seen us on the station.”

  It took me forever to form the words. Tournour was patient as he watched me struggle to speak.

  “Yes, we saw the Humans.” Tournour made a face. It was a face that I was beginning to recognize; one of distaste for my species.

  “And yet no one seems to admit that you exist. The Children of Earth claim to have never heard of you and therefore have no place for you on any of their four colonies. They also say all life forms are accounted for on the Prairie Rose and that you are not on that manifest. Earth, as you know, does not extend protection to those who choose to leave.”

  “You are talking too fast,” I said.

  He repeated himself.

  “They left me behind,” I said.

  “No one wants you,” Tournour said.

  “My family wants me.”

  “They have a funny way of showing it,” Tournour said.

  “There’s been a mistake,” I said. “A misunderstanding.”

  Tournour looked frustrated. I noticed that his skin patch turned darker as though he were flushed.

  “Well, whatever the problem is, it’s no longer mine. We are no longer responsible for you,” he said.

  “What will I do?” I asked.

  “You can try to appeal,” Tournour said. “We can no longer afford to extend any hospitality to you. As I said, you are Human and not our problem.”

  “Where will I go?” I asked.

  “That’s the trouble with Humans, you think that the rules of the universe don’t apply to you and that you can wander anywhere. You travel and roam from place to place. Nomads. You fight against each other instead of working together.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” I said. “I just want to catch up with my mother and sister and head to the Human colony on Beta Granade.”

  Tournour’s antenna folded and straightened.

  “Do you have any friends on the station?” he asked.

  “No. What’s left of my family and friends are on the Prairie Rose.”

  “Do you have a currency chit?”

  “No.”

  Tournour paused.

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen,” I said. “Almost fifteen.”

  “Is that old or young?” Tournour asked. “It’s hard to tell with some species.”

  “Young.”

  “Are you a child?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “That’s a shame. If you were an actual child, then maybe I could find a loophole. There are more lenient rules regarding children.”

  It was hard to read aliens, but it seemed to me that this one had softened.

  I didn’t feel like a child. I was only months away from the age of majority. At 15 I could legally emancipate myself, even if I was not allowed to vote or marry or imbibe.

  “Are you old or young?” I asked.

  I could tell that I had surprised him. It pleased me a little bit that I could. It made the moment seem more real, rather than surreal, which was how I’d felt since the med bay released me and sent me here.

  “Why would you care?” He seemed defensive. His antennae turned from left to right quickly. I’d agitated him.

  “I’m just curious,” I said.

  “I don’t know what your species considers old or young,” Tournour said, relaxing. “I haven’t met very many Humans. I’m not very well traveled.”

  “You’re here,” I said.

  “So are you,” he said and then paused. “I’m more than less.”

  I didn’t understand what that meant. I knew that some species considered fifty years old to still be a child. No matter how hard Humans had tried to extend longevity, it was rare for anyone to be older than 115.

  “Where will I go?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who can I ask for help?”

  His antennae folded and pointed at me. Then they stood back up straight.

  “There is always the Ministry of Colonies and Travel,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Since only the five Major Species have embassies, the Ministry of Colonies and Travel is for everyone else with grievances. A place for colonists from Minor Species, or those below that, aliens with only home planets and no colonies at all. Every Minor Species always has something to grieve about. But you need to purchase a token to do a search.”