When Loren led them down into the basement rec room, Bernard hadn’t been sure what to expect. They’d seen it on the initial tour with his family, and there wasn’t much to it, unless something was hidden under the floor or behind the walls or bookcase.
Still, it was an impressive space, lit by a wicker ceiling fan and a trio of small, rectangular windows. It smelled faintly of high-quality tobacco, and featured a pool table, dart board, mini bar, wine rack, and a caramel-colored ostrich leather couch. The concrete floor was covered in 1970s linoleum tile and graced with a black and white cowhide. A large television stood ready for the next big game, with a Carolina Panthers banner stretched across the cinderblock wall behind it. A dusty portable radiator stood in the corner.
Everything had a gently worn appearance, as though someone had lived here, but had clearly cared for the place. It was hard to believe the whole thing was fake.
Loren bent down next to large wooden bookcase, stretching across the wall beside the couch, and fumbled momentarily near the floor. There was an audible “click,” and he straightened, pushing the bookcase. It slid aside silently.
“The latch is behind the rear foot,” he told them.
Behind the bookcase was a small metal panel with a numeric pad.
“It’s coded to the last six digits of your Agency ID,” he said, “The first few digits can be changed. It just signifies where you’re from, and some folks get it switched to their preferred home base. For instance: my original code said I was from a Shonetherau refugee camp, but I fell in love with Virginia and wanted it to reflect my new home. If you’re off-world, a modified version of your full ID can be used like a phone number.”
He keyed in his own number, and a large portion of the wall retracted, exposing cinderblock veneer over thick metal, and a layer of unfamiliar porous material. The section parted from the center, sliding away into the wall to reveal a doorway.
“The further underground we get, the less likely it is anyone is gonna pick up on energy signatures from our equipment, so as long as you’re behind this door, you can use most of our technology freely. They’ve reinforced it with starship paneling, too. There’s some debate over whether all the caution is necessary, but since no one’s really sure just how much our enemies can do, we’d rather not take chances.
“There are emergency exits that lead to the barn and the hangar, so if anyone here is afraid of being trapped underground, there are other ways out. The worst part’s just the airlocks.”
It was an oblong space, cornerless and well-lit with a ceiling-width panel light featuring a blue sky and occasional clouds. Warm beige walls were textured in a striated twig-like pattern. The floor had the appearance of dirt, but was solid like concrete. It felt like a replica bird’s nest.
“Again,” Loren said, “If you’re claustrophobic, many Ryozae’ll side with you. This ain’t nothin’ fancy, but it’s better than plain concrete and fluorescent lighting.”
“This is ‘nothing fancy’?” Mireia asked.
Saara moved past her into the room and took her hand, beckoning. “The airlocks need to be simple and anti-bacterial, but we become depressed in spare, sterile spaces. Even the illusion of confinement can cause most of us to panic. Just because it needs to be cleared of foreign impurities doesn’t mean it can’t serve as a welcome mat.”
Loren added, “Wait until you see the interior.”
He shut the door behind them, and a soft hiss came from the ceiling.
Perhaps it was imaginary, but Bernard felt that the air was becoming crisper and cleaner. The tobacco smell noticeably lifted, and in another minute, it was gone.
A door appeared on the opposite wall, sank inward, and slid apart from the center like the first door.
The room they entered was oval-shaped, warm, and wood-paneled, with arched gothic ceilings, wall-to-wall bookshelves, and ostrich-leather furnishings. As they entered, a warm, golden light began pouring from stained glass panels in small, arched windows around the room, and gleamed cheerfully from an intricately branched chandelier in the center. An oval table sat in below the chandelier, and across from it lay a huge oblong piece of furniture they had never seen before.
It was bordered in wood, carved with fern-like patterns, and bore a wide, mostly concaved surface, raised toward the back, mounded in the center, and covered in some kind of long, lush, wavy gray and black fur.
Bernard and the girls stood in the entry, shocked by the whole scene.
“Oh!” Saara moved right for the big fur-covered thing. “Is that real wool?” She sat down on it. “Oh, it is!”
Loren stared up at the lights. “They really didn’t have t’go to this much trouble.”
“It looks just like a headquarters lounge!” Saara said, flopping back on the long wool. “Real Gotland. I’m taking this couch with me when we’re done with the site.”
“That’s a couch?” Bernard asked.
“This is normal?” Jez asked.
Saara stood abruptly. “I’m going to change! I can’t let this go to waste!”
“Hurry up, would you?” Loren called as she walked away towards a large door on the other side of the room, which slid apart from the center at a touch. As she left, he gestured around the room, explaining, “On the whole, our people love intricacy, fine details, and anything that reminds us of the natural spaces our ancestors roamed in. On Earth, we’ve found it in the soaring columns, arched ceilings, and lacelike geometries of Gothic architecture. It needs little modification to turn columns and arches into trees and branches. This room represents the sort of style we would use for a private lounge. I came down here last night, but I still can’t get over it.”
Mireia had walked away, scanning the bookshelves. “These are all culture and geography. History. Art.” She pulled one down. “Incredible. The attention to detail is immaculate. If you wanted to find someone hiding on Earth,” she glanced around, “we have all the information we’re going to need for wherever we plan on going.”
Jez walked over to a large globe and turned it gently. “But this guy could be anywhere. . . . Anywhere on Earth.”
He pointed across the room, at the door Saara had left through. “There’s a walkway over a cavern on the other side of that door. It’s not for us, but I’ll show you the other exits when we’re done, here.”
To the looks they gave him, he added, “Just trust me. You’ll have your answers soon.”
The door opened again, and a large creature entered the room.
At first glance, it was reminiscent of a Utahraptor, or another large raptor. Thick layers of fine feathers covered the entire body in mottled beiges and browns, and long reddish-brown wing and tail feathers bore spots and bars in jet black. The long, plush feathers over its belly were a rich off-white shade like aged ivory.
The animal moved on two legs with a feline grace as it crossed the room towards the strange couch.
“Whenever Saara’s ready,” Loren said, shoving his hands in his pockets impatiently, “Or Sekirrandr, if she prefers.”
The animal—Saara—settled on the couch, nestling into the mounded center contentedly, and regarded them all with feathers raised over her head and down the back of her neck in an unfamiliar expression. She spoke in a low, warbling voice, “Saara or Seki is fine. If you were expecting a six-foot-tall killer Velociraptor, you had best go back to watching T.V. This body was made for two purposes: to bear a nest, and raise its children. To birth, provide, and protect.”
“Holy shit,” Mireia whispered in awe, slipping a rare swear word, and beating Jez only by a narrow margin.
“I wish they had left something for me to wear. We do normally have at least some form of . . . I guess you’d say jewelry. Not clothing, necessarily. I don’t expect a full costume, but we do have some lovely things.” She flashed a wing indicatively, then waved it at Loren, “You may continue, my friend.”
Loren shook his head, and said, “I knew you were a big girl, but I didn’t think you were big enough to swallow me whole.”
She made an odd warbling sound, which gave her an air of amusement. Bernard realized she must be laughing, as she told him, “Yours is very cute.”
He frowned, looking away from her as he cleared his throat, “Anyhow: the map. Let’s get started. You three can choose to sit down if ye’d like.”
He slid open a drawer in the table, and pulled out a clear tablet, lit with images and unfamiliar script. Then he tapped a circular piece of wood inlay in the center of the table.
The room darkened and filled with stars, expanding out, and out, and out, until they were surrounded by a three-dimensional image of a galaxy.
Bernard stumbled backwards along with the girls, and sat down between them.
“Dammit to hell,” Loren muttered, “Well, now you know what our galaxy looks like. I don’t know why it started out this far. ‘Scuse me a moment, y’all.”
Jez whispered, “But it’s so cool.”
“It’s also inconvenient.” He tapped the tablet, and the galaxy began to zoom back in, becoming inconceivably immense as it expanded away from them, until slowly but surely it started to focus on a single area, then a single star came into view, amidst a number of other pinpricks of light. It zoomed in until one of the pinpricks slowly turned into Earth.
“I’m gonna adjustment this thing,” he grumbled, “That took too damn long.”
He tapped it a few more times. “That should do it. So: We all know what Earth looks like. From here, we’ll be able to record mission data and view other agents’ related data, so we don’t backtrack over someone else’s work unnecessarily, or in case we need to revisit something because we now have Bernard, who should be able to work with Toby far more efficiently than anyone else can.”
He tapped the tablet again. The image zoomed out, more quickly than before, and panned through space until it arrived in another spot on the same arm, but this time it looked . . . empty. Whatever he was about to show them, there was nothing there.
Loren zoomed in, unperturbed, until several stars appeared—and not gradually, like Earth’s sun, but very suddenly and all at once. A slight shimmer surrounded the whole group, stronger towards the far end and weakening as it reached the side facing Earth.
“This is Xuri lu’Xal Enjhi,” Loren explained, “Or that’s its most archaic name, from which all other dialectal names and abbreviations are derived. It means ‘Our Shadow Realm,’ or ‘Void Realm,’ if you prefer. The word Enhji usually refers to anything dark-colored or hidden—in shadow, or in the absence of light. If you called it ‘The Void,’ folks’ll know what you mean.
“It’s reasonably close to Earth. With modern star drives, you can make it from here to most of our planets within a few days. The biggest dilemma woulda been finding it in the first place, followed by the unfortunate fact that, until recently, if you travelled to the other end of Xal Enjhi, you’d live, but you’d never be seen again.
“We call it a shadow because Xal Enjhi exists within a warped anomaly, which masks it from the outside, and until recently—in universal terms—it affected the way time travelled across the realm. Thing is: we didn’t understand that until about sixty Terran years ago . . . when someone came back. Until then, we just assumed that flying out there was a terrible idea, and left it at that.
“As to how the Ryozae came about in the first place, I don’t know the whole story. It happened more than seventy-to-a-hundred twenty million years ago—which is a long time no matter how you bend it. My parents and many others—mostly dinosaurs—are said to have been taken from this planet by an ancient race of Ilaysians. The time span’s not too unreasonable if you understand anything about relativity. It was more than likely a series of missions that arrived at different time periods.
“I’m told they were usually killed for lab uses, a few were saved here and there over time. These Ilaysians—The Bringers, we call them—altered their victims and dropped them off here on Refvrenzo,” he zoomed in on an Earth-like world on the weakest edge of the shimmering field, closest to Earth, “We’re not sure why they did it, but the most likely cause may be simple as the notion that our people were no longer needed for our original intent. We might just be an abandoned experiment.
“Very few of us were ever given the procedure for near-eternal life, but no amount of supposed immortality or specialized alteration was enough to save us from the initial die-offs. My parents don’t remember much, but they do remember the death. Anything and everything could kill a Terran being back in those days. Lack of food, malnutrition, accidental poisoning, environmental exposures, other species, or even each other. It took ages for us to come together and cooperate.”
He panned over to indicate an icy planet within the same system, “The planet’s closest neighbor is the Ilaysian homeworld. . . . Note that Ilaysian is a borrowed generic word. We have no way of knowing if The Bringers and the modern Ilaysians are the same species, though our modern overlords would like us to think so.”
“What little we do know, we know because a few Immortals who survived, like the Queen of Dormnasar and the Rizek Family of Zeron, have maintained detailed records. Which takes us further into the interior of Xal Enjhi.”
The starfield panned over until it settled on a watery world with a few scattered continents and smaller islands. “Most of the Ryozae you’re going to encounter with ETHICS will be either the Nasouryozae of Dormnasar, like Saara and the others that you met outside that candy store, or the Nakaryozae of Ilaenakar. You’ll often hear them called Nasu and Naka. If it helps you remember the difference, the softer name belongs to nicer people, and the harsher name . . . well they ain’t known for being pleasant.”
“Dormnasar’s solar rotation is slow and elliptical, so along with various geological conditions, the planet is known for its extreme seasons, and for swinging erratically through long eras of ice and flood. When its frozen solid, it has a fair amount of landmass, but it’s in a melting phase right now, so the landmasses are shrinking, which has led to the revival of an old lottery-style culling program. Nasu refugees are those who escaped the lottery, and most of us here have lost family.”
Saara spoke softly, in a low growl from somewhere deep within her, “The lottery targets entire families. My brother and I are all that’s left of the Hhuarosso-urrgaao.” The name sounded more like part hiss and part growl than a word. “He is . . . er . . . difficult and expensive to care for, so ETHICS covers his needs in exchange for my service.”
Loren nodded, clearing his throat as he focused on the map, “I was born after my family escaped, but my service covers my parents and my remaining sister. They’re pretty conflicted about me being here. That word she used, by the way, ‘urr-gaao,’ means ‘family.’ And that’s the closest enunciation you’re going to get from me in this body, right now. If you can’t make fancy sounds, just draw out the syllables. Our language, Moehni, has a wide range of speakers of vastly different capabilities, so I’m going to teach you a standardized form that will be the most broadly intelligible.”
The field zoomed out, and focused in on a planet in a nearby star system, desolate and rocky, with a thin, whispy atmosphere and a surface dominated by small lights. “This is Ilaenakar, inhabited by the Naka. It has a long history with Dormnasar due to their proximity, so even though the planets and their people are polar opposites, they are closely connected in many ways, both socially and biologically.
“The Naka are scavengers. They crafted the surface and atmosphere of their own planet out of the barren rock it sits on, over long eons that have forged some of the most unusual and highly specialized Ryozae you will see between the two worlds. Their territorial alliances have been known to clash violently, and the planet has produced more than its fair share of space-bound pirates, so if you happen to hear someone say something that sounds particularly cold and cruel, don’t take it too personally. They’re probably Naka. I’m still convinced the whole reason you’re here is because of some sort of cold-blooded Naka-logic. Oh, and they don’t natively speak Moehni like the rest of us. They call it Naka-Moehni, but it sounds like something else entirely.”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Jez asked him, “Did I hear that right about space pirates?”
Loren laughed bitterly, “Yeah, but don’t expect to see any swashbuckling Ryozae Errol Flynns flying around. That honor might go to the warrior races of Zeron. Which is where this gets fucking strange.”
Mireia laughed, “Strange? This isn’t already strange?”
“This is normal,” Loren muttered, zooming back out, “Normal, everyday, standard mode of operations.”
He pointed at another star system, “Before we get to that, I just want to briefly cover Rokane,” he pointed near the center of the warp field, “We can go over the Kuai’Nar group some other time. There’s not much you need to know about unless you’re Naka,” he gestured vaguely toward the fringes of the field, past Ilaenakar, “but Rokane is known for its brief relationship with our origins. The planet is high in lead and sulfur, but it’s one of the reasons so many of us died, and so many are now able to survive a wide variety of otherwise toxic environments. It’s also known to have been the launch point for a group of Ryozae ancestors who set off for the deepest regions of Xal Enjhi, never to be seen again . . . as I said . . . until about sixty years ago.”
Something occurred to Bernard, “You mean the incident in 1949.”
Loren nodded, “Samra did mention it.”
“Toby said the Patrol wiped out an Airforce base over the recovery of a lost child. I just . . . feel like I’ve heard that story before. And you said the Rizek family was from Zeron, and that’s Samra’s family.”
Saara said, “It’s possible she’s told you the story before. The child was her father.”
Loren whipped around to face her. “What did you say?”
“You didn’t know that? You’re so young—”
“Then you tell them,” Loren snapped.
Saara made that strange, amused warbling sound again and spoke with a trill in her voice, “There’s no need to get upset. It’s just that I was around when it happened. I don’t know much more than that, though. Her family was divided over some matter or other, around the late 1930s, and had lost a child in the conflict. L’mauz lu’Rizek came looking for his son, and that’s how we found out about Zeron. The boy was eventually found, and no one heard from them again for a long time, until the Ryozakkan began asking for refuge with ETHICS in the late 70s.
“They haven’t been integrating well, though. They’re rude, won’t orders from anyone other than their own, and always do things their own way. They have their own cultures, history, and languages. They even have their own specialized types, just like the Naka, and they’ve learned to create hybrids, which of course is so unnatural, and they have the sorcerers too, and . . . that doctor is also from their world, but he’s from a different group. A very wealthy isolationist clan, with nothing to offer us but their arrogance.
“What’s more: the people of Zeron have only been out there for a million years, or so, because it lies at the source of the time distortion in the Xal Enjhi field. As a result, they’ve had less time to develop than the rest of us. They abuse our resources, they don’t always give back equitably, and they’re known for taking too many risks. If you ask my people, we believe they are a critical security breach waiting to happen.”
The map had been moving at Loren’s command, soaring until it reached a small, isolated planet, orbiting a distant blue star. It was an Earth-like world, but all the colors were wrong. The seas sparkled in shades of amethyst, and the crimson continents seemed to contain every other color but green. It was mostly water, like Dormnasar, but where the other planet was drab at first glance, this one was so colorful that it was hard to imagine why anyone would want to leave. It was beautiful, and visibly rich with life.
Then again, Bernard thought, perhaps the competition for space was too stiff.
Something stirred in the back of his mind.
War. There was too much war.
Mireia said, “Sam told me her people were better equipped to fight a war than to start one.”
“I don’t trust her,” Saara said simply.
“I don’t trust your Naka space pirates and scavengers. I’ll take my chances with the warriors.”
Saara drew a course breath, making a crude sound, and rumbled irritably, “You’re better off with the Nasu, really—”
Loren cut her off, “See, this is why I’m the trainer, because you have to give your opinion on everybody.”
Saara leaned her head back, gazing down her long nose at him critically. “You know this organization could not exist without fair and reasonable Nasu policies and people holding it together.”
“And yet I have never been called to investigate Ryozakkan activities.” He turned away from her before he rolled his eyes. “I still have another planet left to cover.”
“You know I’m right,” she said.
Loren panned out so the teens could see him better, and asked them, “Do you want to take a break?”
Mireia shook her head, “We’re here, now, you might as well get it over with.”
“You asked for it. So: This last part is a bit of a doozy, so if that’s a problem, you can take it up with Bernard, because we wouldn’t have known about it if not for him.”
Bernard blinked, bewildered, and braced himself for the worst as he asked, “What the fuck did I do?”
Loren panned over, out to a distant star, and zoomed in on what looked like a yellow gas giant, “Son, you struck an alliance with a new species.”
“Come again?”
“Maybe not intentionally, and not to your own knowledge, but behind the scenes at HQ our leadership team has been working on this thing ever since. The current Drorg emperor credits you, and he makes most of his decisions based on whatever he thinks you would do.”
“Why me?”
“Because you made first contact, and cared for one of their lost children, and that’s good enough for them. And because Emperor Arlo, formerly known as Johnathan, was that child. Drorgs form close attachments, and their children often take personality cues from their bonded partners.”
“Whatever Toby is, he’s been very secretive with us, but that wasn’t the case with the Drorgs. They were very relieved to see their child alive and well in good hands.”
Saara’s low voice cooed softly, “Why don’t you put the map away, Loren? I heard the back door open. We’ll show them.”
Loren nodded, lowering the map. The lights came back on. He glanced around, and then turned back to Bernard. “You and Toby will be working with me. I’m going to teach you to fly a plane, and that’s how we’re going to get most of our work done. The girls will have other arrangements.”
Two shimmering forms, glistening like heat waves, appeared over the coffee table. The shimmer dissipated, and a pair of odd, winged creatures stood before them.
One was silver, with a copper sheen as it turned in the light, and the other was pure white, with a shining accent like moonlight on snow. Smooth and eel-like, they each stood around the size of small cats. They had slender heads with pairs of small, rounded horns, and large eyes under protective lenses, held in place by thin black masks that covered the upper parts of their faces. The silver one had wide copper lenses, and the white one’s were topaz blue. Bernard suspected their eyes might match, but he couldn’t be sure. They had short forearms, and large, powerful hind limbs.
Delicate membranous webbing spread over dragon-like wings, from the base of each sinuous neck past the base of each long, whiplash tail. Each tail ended in a broad lateral rudder. They were perfectly aerodynamic.
Each wore a small harness and a tiny saddle, as though meant to be ridden.
Loren told them, “At one point, ETHICS had five Drorgs in its care. Empress Lightfire’s partner was a Terran girl who worked with you for a short time, but chose to leave soon after, so her memory was erased in the traditional way. Lightfire had no desire to stay on Earth, after that, so she left, and Arlo went with her. I was told Bernard encouraged it, since the two were very close. The pair later went on to take over a significantly large faction on their homeworld, where they became our political allies. Falcon and Winter,” he indicated the two on the table, “were assigned to Jez and Mireia, and have been working for ETHICS since 1990. Our direct supervisor, Danny, has the care of the fifth one.”
Jez reached forward cautiously, and yelped as the snowy white Drorg leapt up her arm, coiling around the back of her neck, snakelike, and came back down to rest in her lap, clear blue lenses gazing straight into her eyes. Its sinuous movements were as fascinating as they were eerie, evoking a strange memory of something Bernard was sure he’d never seen before.
Mireia remained staring at the silver one, which was staring right back, as she asked, “So, obviously, Johnathan is a boy’s name—”
Loren shook his head, “I’m told he still answers to the name on occasion, but he goes by his birth name, Arlo. The others use the only names they’ve ever had, but he was older when he met Bernard. We try to stick to ungendered names because the Drorgs are born hermaphrodites. They can choose their genders as they get older, and they can change as they like or need to, after the fact. So as far as I know, those two either don’t have a specific gender, or they’ll let you know when they’re ready.”
Jez stroked the white one’s head cautiously. “How?”
A light buzzing sound came from the silver one, as it began to fiddle with its harness, and then a small, stilted electronic sound came from it. “We speak. This method not convenient. Functional.”
Bernard noticed, however, that they never stopped moving. At all times, one or both of them was fidgeting, fluttering, or . . . gesturing.
“Sign language,” he said, “They’re speaking in sign language, aren’t they?”
The white one’s head undulated on its long neck in an affirmative motion. A tiny, frog-like trill chimed from somewhere along its throat.
Mireia extended a hand to the other, Falcon, and it flew into her lap, rubbing catlike against her stomach, before resting its neck between her breasts, and its head against her heart.
The white one, Winter, made a lower trill call, getting its attention. Whatever gesture Winter made, Falcon turned its face away to ignore it, lifting its wing with its claws arced in a familiar human gesture as it gave its companion a brief middle finger.
Mireia’s brows rose. “I hope your friend deserved that.”
This time, Bernard could see its small fingers working a device on its harness, near its chest. “Needs to mind their own. I miss vibrations.”
“Vibrations?” Mireia asked.
Falcon leaned back, and thumped its hands against her breastbone meaningfully, gazing into her eyes.
“You mean, like the sound of my body?”
It rubbed against her again, resuming its previous position. Its tail whipped out, and she gasped in shock as the rudder gripped her wrist and drew her hand in to rest against its back, coaxing her to pet it.
“It’s so strong,” she whispered in awe, obliging its request with a slow, hesitant stroke.
Bernard reached out to Winter, curious, and the white one flipped its tail over, letting him see the silky ventral side. When he touched it, he could feel the soft surface grasping his fingers with a shockingly powerful grip, and releasing him apparently at will. With the aid of their long, thin toes and strong hind legs, they were well-equipped to live arboreally.
Loren handed Bernard the tablet. “Look, here: if you’re familiar with how starfish move, they have hundreds of weird little tentacle-looking tube feet that end in suckers. So it’s sorta like that. It’s just hard to see them at this size.”
Jez and Mireia both leaned over to see the screen, and Jez asked, “Well, how big do they get?”
Loren nodded back towards the cavern he had mentioned, “About the size of small passenger jets. They can show you later. That’s why there’s so much underground space back there.”
“They can do that NOW?” Mireia cried, snatching the screen and staring at it.
“It’s a touch screen,” Loren said, “Slide the display with your fingers.”
“Weird,” she muttered, her eyes scanning the text intently, “So weird. So we can ride these guys?”
“That’s the plan. So are you ready to see your contracts?”
She glared at him, “You mean the ones we don’t have a choice in?”
“You actually do have a few choices you get to make, but yes: the ones we’re making you sign.”
Jez held her hand out, “Get it over with, dude.”
He walked over to the bookshelves, opened one of the lower cabinets, and came back with an immense black folder, a stack of thick spiral-bound books, and a stack of folders.
Then he dropped the black folder on the table. “This is the core case file for Nightmare, if any of you want to read it.”
Bernard felt his eyes widen as his body grew numb and cold.
“If you’re having dreams about it, then I wouldn’t recommend diving too deep, but you have a right to see it. None of this stuff leaves this room, and especially not that. Treat this place like a security vault, because that’s where these files are supposed to be.”
Loren handed them each a folder and book. “This covers everything I just discussed, and more.”
He had to wave the book in Bernard’s face to break his gaze, and Bernard took it gladly, willing to forget the ominous black file on the table, for now.
“There’s one for each of you, and room to take notes if you need to. It also contains a primer on our language, written and spoken, and an introduction to International Sign Language. It never occurred to our founding members that your people would not expect hearing people to understand or use a language developed so that the hearing impaired could communicate, so they just assumed it was standard. It’s proven useful to know, so they’ve kept it in our training program. If you don’t know it, the option is open. ISL is a bit different from ASL, but we’re an interplanetary organization and you have hundreds of sign languages—haha, you didn’t know that, did you?”
Bernard glanced at the girls, who glanced back and shook their heads. As far as any of them knew, there was only one sign language.
“You don’t need to learn everything immediately, since you won’t be able to take the books out of this room for security reasons.”
Mireia glanced back down at the booklet, and asked him, “If you have archivists keeping track of things, why does so much of your early history consist of, ‘we don’t know’?”
“Because we don’t,” he said, shrugging, “The Bringers and the Rokanians and the Refvrish didn’t spring up out of nowhere overnight. We don’t know where the hell any of them came from, or when or where their technologies were developed. We do know that the Refvrish came close to extinction during our time.”
Bernard had opened his folder, and was staring at the first page of the contract, under the “applicable parties” statement.
“Loren . . . what’s a ‘Non-Terran Human’?”
Jez said, “I guess someone who moved from Earth, right?”
Loren’s eyes widened, and he glanced back at Saara. “I didn’t cover that?”
“You skipped the Refvrish,” she said.
“You didn’t correct me?!”
She tilted her head and answered in an, unreadable warble, “You’re the trainer, like you said. I thought you had a plan.”
Loren grimaced and shoved his hands in his pockets, turning back to the teenagers uncomfortably as he explained, “Refrenzo’s dominant population consists of three distinct species of human, genetically separate from those found on Earth.”
Silence followed his words. Mireia flipped frantically through her book. Bernard leaned over to look with her. Jez opened her contract, and said, “You’re joking, right?”
“So,” Mireia asked, “You’re saying humans developed on another planet?”
“We don’t know,” Loren said again, “All archeological evidence points to the development of humans on Earth in geologically recent times, but there’s no evidence for the evolution of humans on Refvrenzo, or anywhere else. No related species, and no evolutionary fossil record. They’re just there, and that’s it. They pre-date your humans, too. It’s one of Xal Enjhi’s greatest mysteries, next to shapeshifting, bioscanners, and the Ilaysians.”
Bernard began flipping through his own book, “Is it possible that the Ilaysians picked them up from Earth?”
“Not without successful time travel,” Loren said, “And that would be pretty extreme travel to and from Xal Enjhi. Remember: the humans were there before the Ryozae.”
“Are you fucking serious, right now?”
Loren took a breath and said, “You can time travel in one direction, and only one, and that ain’t time travel, that’s just how relativity works. On the highly unlikely chance that you found a stray wormhole, you still can’t travel to a time when you didn’t exist to begin with. You’d still be traveling forward, with the ability to go back where you began.
“And say you found a way to travel backwards: how the would you even be able to test it to be sure you went back to the right place and time? And on the slimmest possible miracle chance that you made a reliable loop, you would risk . . . I don’t know. I guess you’d break reality. You’d have to be stupid to try it. We can view the past by looking up at the sky at night, but traveling? There’s just no way even the most advanced species in the galaxy could have done it. That doesn’t tell us where the humans came from, but it tells us where they didn’t come from.”
Bernard studied the book, thinking hard, and said, “What if, by some chance the humans are from our future, then, and happened on such a wormhole that successfully took them backwards?”
“I suppose it could be possible,” Loren said, “Especially if they landed in an anomaly like Xal Enjhi. But I ain’t a physicist. I really cain’t say.”
“If their future descendants created the reason their ancestors left Earth without the knowledge of doing it, it would theoretically be a closed loop.”
Jez shook her head, “It sounds even crazier when you say it. Where the hell did you even get an idea like that?”
He shrugged, “I don’t know, Jez. I couldn’t tell you if I thought of it, or Toby thought of it, or I remembered it from somewhere else. I don’t know anything anymore. I’m just rolling with it.”
She put a hand on his head. “I haven’t ruled out getting you checked for food poisoning.”
Toby’s voice broke in, “It sounds like something Silver would have said. He trained you last time.”
Loren gave a bitter, humorless laugh, “If that’s the case, son, you’re more than welcome to stop remembering things he told you. That one, there, makes my head spin.” Then he pointed at the contracts. “Toby tells me you’ve already covered most of the benefits. We’re all Class 1-B, so we should all be making top pay in that category, even though I can’t send you home with more than $40,000 net pay.”
Jez flipped through her contract, and froze, gawking at it. “Fucking hell! $120,000 a year!”
Bernard opened his. “So they’re just . . . what? Dropping $80,000 a year into a savings account we can’t use?”
“Unless you designate another purpose for the money,” Loren said, “There’s a section for that. That’s why it’s a sixty-page document. You can tack it onto you transportation voucher and buy a nicer car, if you want. Here in the US, it’s recommended you finance the car. Just remember you still need to pay insurance and maintenance costs. You’re not going to qualify for any exemptions, there.”
Mireia’s jaw dropped. “Counselors start at $160,000?”
Loren grinned, “Yes, but it’s rare that anyone ever takes home six figures. Still, I realize that’s an unexpected figure. Our organization was essentially founded by our Mental Health Department. Our counselors have a lot of sway. Whoever put this team together had to get it cleared through Counseling before it could proceed. There should be a copy of the approval page in your packet with Glenda Vern’s name on it. She’s the head of the department for the whole organization. Remember: we’re all refugees in hiding, and many of us have experienced intense trauma—no one just packs up and leaves their homeland for no reason, much less their home planet. A counselor has to approve your mental health status before you can apply for immigration, and if you don’t check in with your assigned counselor once a month, they’ll call—and that goes for you, as well. Glenda is also your personal counselor, so you should call her soon, but if you don’t, she’ll probably call me, since you still live with your families.
“While you’re at it, be sure to check your personal profiles and submit any changes you’d like to make. They’re seven years out of date. I’m gonna run to Walterboro to pick up some barbeque for dinner—assuming that Seki plans to stay where she’s at.”
Saara gave a low, contented rumble as she pulled her tail up against her body and settled her head against her feathers. “Go. I will watch.”
He set a few pens on the coffee table, and walked out.
It took a long time to get through the whole document, and Bernard froze when he reached the section near the end labeled “Death, Dismemberment, or Permanent Injury.” It was long, and most of it seemed like reasonable legal statements regarding ETHICS’ assumed liability for most damages with few exceptions, but it stated that if anything happened to him in the line of duty, his family would never know the truth. In the interest of security, in line with their opening statement, “ETHICS Security is Terran Security” and the Non-Disclosure Agreement, they would never reveal their existence. Even if it meant having to lie to his mother.
By the time Loren returned, he still hadn’t signed it.
Throughout dinner, he ate in silence, while Jez and Mireia weighed the pros and cons of the contract, as though they had a choice. It took Bernard a while to figure out that they were choosing to view it obbjectively, rather than sign it blindly because they didn’t have a choice.
A strange déjà vu hit him while they were talking: a scene like this, at his mother’s dining room table. Samra explaining the options they had. They could flee the planet, but the problem might just transfer to someone else.
Nightmare would just find a new victim.
Zirol would still exist, whether he signed it or not.
If they backed out now, they would lose their memories of the past three or four days, and this time they would have to go through the standard procedure, with unknown consequences from whatever damage might be caused. And Zirol would still exist.
As soon as they were done eating, he signed the form.