Friday, April 22, 2022

STORY: "Boy of No Country"

 

Boy of No Country

 

By Raven Green

 

Gamma Cladus XII System…

Pegasus Dwarf Irregular Galaxy…

Sometime after the Sixth Great Migration…

 

A baby cried as her older sister changed her diaper inside the caged-off area of the detention center. The older girl was crying too. I went over to her. She was my age. She looked like another Starfarer, from her clothes. She wore the browns and greys of the Idoh Clan. I tried to put my hand reassuringly on her shoulder, but she recoiled from my touch. I’d been watching her for days. Every kid here was sad, but she was the saddest because she was one of the oldest kids here. She was caregiver for the younger ones who could not help themselves. She couldn’t speak the Cladustins’ language, though. Only me and a few other boys spoke enough to communicate with the guards.

I didn’t give up trying to make a connection.

“I’m Jedmas Karkian,” I said. “Mako-Ru Clan.”

She didn’t respond at first. I thought this must have to do with the bruises on her face. I hadn’t heard her speak once. Maybe she was mute, or maybe they just beat the voice out of her.

“I won’t let them hurt you again. You’re too important here. They can beat me,” I said. “They already did.” I parted the hair on the back of my head to show her my bruise.

“I don’t want to see that happen again,” she said. “I’m Viola Ressik. Idoh-Pai Clan.”

She finished up the changing the baby and tossed the rolled up used diaper atop a pile of them at the wall of the cage.

“I wish they’d clean that up,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“It’s not the diapers. The whole planet stinks,” I said.

And I finally heard her laugh. It was the first time in days I’d heard anyone laugh.

And I thought, for the first time, that I would get out of here someday, and the universe would know about this place.

Disguising my hatred with my laughter, I glared through the cage at the guard who now wore my ring.

 

#

 

“What were you doing away from the compound?”

It was a stupid question, from a stupid planetsider cop, but if I called him on his stupidity, and that was hard not to do just by being honest, he’d probably hit me again.

“Shopping!” I said. “I was looking at some merchant’s stuff. Are my parents alive?”

“How would we tell them apart?” the bastard asked. “You clannies all look alike.”

“Actually, we look like you. The other clannies, they’re the really weird ones,” I said. And immediately regretted it. The pain of his gloved strike was worse this time.

I screamed. I don’t remember when I stopped, or when the cop left the room, but the next thing I knew I was slumped upright in that chair with my hands cuffed to the table, and across from me was a woman in a dark suit, with close-cropped red hair.

“Child, my name is Agent Vankya Shalkatz. And I’m your only friend here. Your people planted a bomb in our spaceport, killing sixty-eight citizens of our great nation.”

“How many Starfarers died?” I asked. She ignored my question.

“You’re here because your people have been involved in some illegal dealings on our planet. They’ve been funneling weapons and ships to our nation’s enemies, while they trade ores with us. We’re hoping you can help us. Who’s supporting the other side?”

“What other side?” I asked, genuinely stumped. I knew nothing of the politics of this planet.

“The Union of Mardain. And their Fifth Column sympathizers. Come now, you must know your people are arms dealers. You Starfarers, you go around looking for anyone who claims they’re the underdog, looking to start revolutions and civil wars. You’re incorrigible,” she sneered. “Terrorists. Every one of you.”

“I don’t know about any fifth column, but your planet’s problems aren’t my problems. I want to go back to my people!” I shouted.

“You have no people. Your folk are nomads, they’ve abandoned you by now. You’re here, an unaccompanied minor. And no, I don’t care if you’re called an adult in your little gang. The only reason you’re not rotting on Torshka Island is because you’re underage. If you don’t cooperate, you will be detained,” she said.

“I’m already detained. Please, I just want to know if my parents are okay. My uncle. My family. Are they even alive?” I asked her, futilely.

She stopped talking, got up, left the room. The door shut behind her and I could hear the lock sliding into place. I put my head down on the table to which I still cuffed and cried. It was only then that I noticed my ring was missing from my finger.

 

#

 

I was scanning a vendor’s table for items of interest when a great and terrible noise bellowed from behind me, like the air turned to glass and suddenly shattered. Flaming debris flew and thick ash rained. An explosion at the spaceport! I turned and rushed toward the fiery source of the noise, and listened intensely to the screams around me, trying in vain to discern my parents’ voices. Terror gripped my body and mind and held on tight. The light, filtered through all that gray ash, made the world around me dark. The only shadows cast came from the flickering fires. I tried to get closer, closer to the source. I needed to know if my family was safe. But I couldn’t get too close, it was too hot, and I stood mesmerized at the periphery of the searing fire with the other onlookers until I felt a pair of firm gloved hands on my shoulders. I turned to see the patrolman standing over me with that grim, thin-pressed set of lips and his helmet with his red-tinted visor. He was armed, not with a stungun or a taser, or tranq-darts like we use on spacecraft, but a real gun- a solid metal slug-thrower. He slipped the weapon out of its holster and held it pointed slightly down at my head.

“Don’t make a move, Starfarer rat. You’re under arrest. As a citizen of no nation, you have no rights. I suggest you come quietly,” he said.

I had no choice. I screamed.

“Help!!!”

Then, I felt the sudden weight of the man’s handgun against the back of my skull, and after that, was blackness.

 

#

 

Dad said we had a day left on Gamma Cladus XIIe. He said to enjoy it. I was finally old enough at twelve that my parents would let me out of their sights when we dropped planetside. We were ore traders, plying the loose network of soft spots that exponentially expanded the range of our starfreighter’s FTL drive, doing business with the locals. We were of the Mako-Ru, one of the last of the Starfarer clans to retain bipedal form. We could still pass as planetsiders, with gravity-assist drugs.

The Cladustins weren’t a bad lot. But they were dull, like most planetsiders. Uninspired, my mom would say. They didn’t look up at the stars in wonder, they looked up in fear and suspicion of outsiders. When we landed here, as in many other places, we were careful not to get involved or attract attention if we left our temporary compounds at the spaceports.

A twelve-year old Starfarer is considered an adult. I’ve already started my apprenticeship as a pilot under the tutelage of my uncle, our spacecraft’s flight officer. Funny word, flight. Spacecraft don’t really fly, do they? To fly implies movement through air. Spacecraft just move. Most of the time. Our dropshuttles fly, of course, but when we’re at home, in deep space, we’re not really flying. It’s just one of those words that means something more now than it did when it was invented.

I sometimes think about what language must have been like in the early days of humanity, in the PreAncient Times before the Diaspora. Most words probably don’t mean what they originally meant. It’s just one of those things I think about sometimes.

I knew enough of the local planetary language families to pick up some of the Cladustin dialect of this city. It was rough and guttural, with lots of tongue-scrapes and rolling Rs. Kesarro… Cheap. Maktash… Humble. Sa’argat…Wise. Shu’ugrrin… foolish. Kayaghtin… Outsider. That was their word for us. I could hear it whispered by planetsiders on their way to the spaceport to visit their nearest moon or wherever.

I quietly eyed the shops and stalls as I walked down the busy footpath that led off from the spaceport to the transit terminal connecting to the city. This city was called Sulr’ruk. It was named for a general of these people, who subdued the people of another nation on their planet. How divided these planetsiders were! Most worlds we visited weren’t yet unified and barely managed to just recently redevelop the Ancient technology that permits faster-than-light travel. Starfarers never lost that technology; our FTL is far superior to that of other peoples’.

The people who maintained the shops and stalls thought we were attracted to bright and shiny things. Their sales were poor, and they had little else that we needed. Still, every once in a while, I found an interesting item. On Kerlien Prime, I found this old analog clock for just a dozen prees. On Portia-61, I bought an Ancient trinket, a metal ring worn by one of the planet’s first settlers. It was almost perfectly preserved- the metal was an unknown composition, and hardly degraded. I wore it proudly on my freighter, but planetside, I kept it hidden with a wrap. Too flashy. Don’t attract attention.