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.