Alien Skies, page 7
part #3 of Wakanreo Series
“Hailoaka,” she said, “what do you think?”
Kamuhi sat up in his chair. “In my experience, ma’am, life doesn’t come with a guarantee—no one’s life. Whenever a child is born, it’s a gamble. Anyway, I agree with Yamomoto that this doesn’t really come under the topic of discussion.”
“All right,” said the instructor, “let’s change the topic. Let’s discuss individual freedom versus the good of society. You start, Hailoaka.”
Kamuhi smiled. “Fine. I’ll give you my opinion on the value of individual freedom when you can get everyone to agree on what constitutes the good of society.”
They were off after that. One of the Shuratanians got into an argument with one of the Terrans over whether society was better served by individualists who strove for advancements in their fields, or by consensus builders who worked to keep everyone’s values similar. The instructor finally had to step in to get them to stop. The group rambled from the topic until it was time for the seminar to end.
After dinner that night, Kamuhi sought out Jukuschh in the common room, where the officer candidates would sometimes gather to discuss the day’s events and any news that was received from the universe outside. The Shuratanian was sitting in a group when Kamuhi came up to him.
“Could I talk to you for a minute, Jukuschh?” Kamuhi said.
The Shuratanian craned his neck to look up at Kamuhi. “Certainly, Hailoaka.” He got to his feet. “Where would you like to talk?”
Kamuhi suggested a table in the corner, and they went and sat down. The chairs weren’t adjustable, and thus were too short for Kamuhi and too tall for Jukuschh, even though they had an open back that accommodated his tail.
Jukuschh wriggled in his seat with his feet dangling. “What can I do for you, Hailoaka?”
“I wanted to talk to you about the seminar today,” Kamuhi said.
The Shuratanian’s eyes sparkled like blue-green jewels. “What about it did you want to discuss?”
“I think you’re being a little too obvious.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’ve done some research on it,” Kamuhi said, “so I’m in a position to know that, in spite of the fact that inter-species marriages are becoming more common, there are fewer than two hundred inter-species crossbreeds alive today. Most people who take a mate from another species choose not to have children, or they adopt them. All but a dozen or so of the two hundred crossbreeds are laboratory induced. That is to say, their parents had to go to a facility that could harvest their reproductive cells, and then use direct genetic manipulation to create a viable embryo.
“All of the exceptions are natural Wakanrean-Terran hybrids, one of whom is my wife and another of whom is my daughter. Another two are my wife’s brother and his child. I really think you should have tried a less obvious way to get me to react. I was bound to figure the odds against that particular topic really coming up naturally.”
Jukuschh hesitated before he spoke. “I’m sorry if anything I said offended you, Hailoaka,” he finally said.
“Jukuschh,” Kamuhi said patiently, “if I was offended, it was because you underestimated my intelligence. I’ve seen you deliberately bring up things that you know will provoke people. I figure, fine, that’s your job. But please, try to come up with something that doesn’t stand out so much. It’s insulting for you to think I won’t catch on.”
The little Shuratanian looked up at him and blinked solemnly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Hailoaka.”
Kamuhi stood up. “Okay. Have it your way.”
THREE days later, Kamuhi’s seminar was an exercise consisting of a pretend emergency. They were supposed to imagine there was a radiation leak in the space station and there was only room for a limited number of people in the one part of the station that was safe. Help would arrive in four hours, but lethal doses of radiation would begin after two hours’ exposure. The class had to decide what decisions to make. Would they rotate people, exposing each of them to limited amounts of danger, or would they pick certain people to be left behind in the dangerous zone? Jukuschh was there but he said very little. Neither did Kamuhi, whose only input was to ask if there were any survival suits that could be used to provide safety outside the station. The exercise resulted in most of the hypothetical people in the station suffering lethal levels of radiation.
The following morning, the message light on the com set was blinking when Kamuhi woke up. When he hit the button, Lieutenant Quanichh’s face appeared with a prerecorded message.
“Good morning, Hailoaka,” she said. “There’s been a change in your schedule for today. Report to level 12B, room 27 immediately after breakfast.”
That was it. There was no more information. Kamuhi was tempted to call her but he figured it would be futile. If she had wanted him to know more, she would have said more. He switched off the com and got ready for breakfast.
Level 12B was two levels below the lowest classroom level. There wasn’t much there. Most of the doors were labeled as storage; a few said they were utility rooms. When he came to room 27, Kamuhi noted that the name plate outside the door was completely blank. Only the room number appeared over the doorway.
The door slid open automatically when he placed his hand on the access plate. Kamuhi stepped in. It wasn’t a large room, perhaps four meters on a side. A desk stood in the middle, facing the door. There was one chair behind the desk and one chair in front of the desk. That and a long, low bench against the far wall were all there was in the room. There were no pictures, no monitors, no com set, no electronic equipment of any kind.
As the door slid shut behind him, Kamuhi had a sudden premonition. He tried the access plate on the inside of the room. The door didn’t budge. Apparently, someone wanted him to stay in this little room for a while.
Kamuhi prowled around the room looking for anything that might give him a clue what was up. If he was under surveillance, it was well hidden. The walls were totally smooth and bare, except for another doorway in the wall next to the bench. That door opened easily, but it led only to a closet-sized bathroom. The desk had no drawers; it was more of a table, really. Kamuhi took the larger of the two chairs, and sat down to wait.
He occupied his time by mentally reviewing the reasons ThreeCon might want to confine him to this room. He came up with a test for claustrophobia, or possibly ingenuity, and then he gave up. He took out his com and recorded an express to send to Yulayan, and then one to his parents. He reviewed some literature he had read recently on the physics involved in the newest iteration of spatial fold generators. Finally, he started a chess game with himself.
Eventually, he looked at the time on his com. He had been in the room for over four hours. Kamuhi sighed. He wondered again what the purpose of such a test could be. He decided that he didn’t have enough information to speculate, so he lay down on the bench, made himself as comfortable as possible, and went to sleep.
He woke up when someone shook his arm. A round Shuratanian face was looking down at him and smiling.
“Wake up, Hailoaka,” the Shuratanian was saying. It was always hard to say with Shuratanians, but Kamuhi had the impression of great age.
Kamuhi sat up and saw that the stranger was wearing a ThreeCon admiral’s uniform. In a second, the face clicked in his memory. This Shuratanian had administered his oath of enlistment on Wakanreo. Kamuhi jumped to his feet and came to attention.
The Shuratanian waved a hand disparagingly. “Don’t bother with that. It’s just you and me for a while. Sit down and make yourself comfortable.”
The Shuratanian took the smaller chair, which Kamuhi noticed had a strategically-placed hole for his tail. Kamuhi saw that there was now a pitcher of water and two glasses on the desk, along with a portable terminal and a data slate. There was also a small, rectangular case on the floor by the Admiral’s chair.
“If you’ll recall,” the Shuratanian said, “my name is Marochh shu Sstad. Would you like a drink of water?”
Kamuhi hesitated just a second and decided to trust the admiral. There were certainly less obvious ways of introducing a drug into his system if they wanted to drug him. “Yes, thank you, sir.”
“Sit down, sit down,” the admiral repeated. As Kamuhi sat down and poured a glass of water, the admiral switched on the terminal.
“Now,” he read from the screen, “let’s see what we have here, shall we? Kamuhi Illka Hailoaka, born on Terra, species Terran, age 29, sex male. Education—” he paused. “Very impressive.” He looked up at Kamuhi. “Well, Hailoaka, we’re going to be here quite a while. We’ll start at the beginning. Tell me about your childhood.”
Chapter Five
Kamuhi talked for well over an hour, giving the admiral the details of what it had been like to grow up in a coastal town in Central America. He described realizing that he was academically gifted and the effect this had on his friendships with other children. He talked about his parents and how they had tried to balance his academic gifts with his need to have a normal childhood.
Most of the time, the Shuratanian would ask a specific question, and Kamuhi would expound upon it until the admiral was satisfied. At one point the admiral gave him a few minutes’ break to use the restroom, but other than that, it was question and answer the whole time.
They proceeded until Kamuhi had reached the point in his narrative where he turned eighteen and signed on as a contract employee with ThreeCon.
“Why did you do that, Hailoaka?”
Kamuhi shrugged. “I wanted to travel. I wanted to see other worlds, other peoples. It’s hard to find a job like that without working for ThreeCon.”
Marochh’s eyes gleamed. “You were offered enlistment then, but you didn’t want to enlist?’
“No, sir.”
“I told you that you didn’t have to call me sir in here, Hailoaka.”
“Yes, sir, I know you did, but it took me a while to get into the habit and I don’t want to get out of it.”
The Shuratanian chuckled. “That’s a good reason. So you didn’t want to enlist. Why not?”
“I didn’t want to have to follow ThreeCon’s rules all the time. And I never liked to take orders.”
“But you’re taking orders now,” Marochh pointed out.
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Very well,” said Marochh, “tell me about your first job for ThreeCon.”
They went through every detail of Kamuhi’s civilian career with ThreeCon, including his time on Shuratan, until they came to his arrival on Wakanreo.
“Why did you request Wakanreo, Hailoaka?”
Kamuhi considered. “It was an interesting world. Wakanreans are a unique people.”
“And that appealed to you more than the physics facilities?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You learned to speak the local dialect?”
“Yes, sir.”
Marochh shook his head. “You must indeed have a gift. I’ve heard people speaking Wisutan.”
The admiral asked more questions about Kamuhi’s work for ThreeCon and what he did in his leisure time. Kamuhi explained about the project he had worked on that had monitored Wakanreo’s sun.
“There wasn’t much to do out at the observatory, Admiral,” he said. “I used to go over to the University in Fargaj, occasionally.”
“I see,” said the Shuratanian. He glanced at the screen. “How long had you been on Wakanreo when you met your wife?”
“Three or four months, sir.”
“And how did you happen to meet her?”
“She came to the observatory on a field trip.”
“And how long had you known her when you got married?”
“Only a few months, sir.”
The admiral looked up. “That was very quick, Hailoaka.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And how long had you known her before you indulged in sexual relations with her?”
The question was asked in exactly the same level tone as all the other questions. It took Kamuhi just a second for the meaning to sink in. He was amazed that the admiral would ask it.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I must decline to answer that question.”
“Declining isn’t an option, Hailoaka. You will answer the question.”
“No, sir.” Kamuhi couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, but he was in no doubt about what he should do.
“Are you refusing to obey a direct order?”
“If you’re ordering me to tell you when I first went to bed with my wife, then yes, sir, I am.”
“Disobeying an order is a serious offense.”
“I know it is, sir.”
Admiral Marochh typed a few words into the terminal. “I’ve made a note of it. We will proceed.”
He went on to ask about Kamuhi’s next assignment on a space station. Kamuhi told him the details of his job there.
“But you returned for a while to Wakanreo,” the admiral said. “Why was that?”
“My wife’s brother contracted a rare form of leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant. She was the only potential donor, so we went back.”
“What happened on the day of the transplant that required Planetary Commander Harlengin to stun you?”
By this time, Kamuhi wasn’t surprised. He had decided that Marochh was deliberately trying to provoke him by asking personal questions.
“My wife came in contact with a Wakanrean man, just in passing, at the hospital. Wakanreans experience a form of mating that’s purely biochemical in nature. It occurred between them then.” Kamuhi stopped.
“Go on,” Marochh prompted.
“They left the hospital together, sir. My wife’s parents took me home with them. I was . . . upset.”
Marochh said nothing but waited.
Kamuhi continued. “After a little while, my wife called her home and told her father that her mate had threatened her because she’s part Terran. Her father asked for help from Commander Harlengin, and they went and found Yulayan. Commander Harlengin stunned me as a precaution, because I was . . . not acting rationally.”
Marochh made another notation on the terminal.
“And while she was with this Wakanrean man,” Marochh asked, “did your wife have sexual relations with him?”
“Admiral, I’m afraid I must decline to answer that question, or any other question that concerns my sex life, or that of my wife.”
Marochh’s ears twitched. “But, Hailoaka, you’ve admitted you were not rational. I need to determine what it took to reduce you to that level. Will you lose control again if your wife has another affair?”
Kamuhi gave a twisted smile. “Admiral, that’s a very plausible justification to try to persuade me to do something that I know is wrong. I stand by my refusal, and you can give me another direct order if you like.”
“Very well.” Marochh made another notation. “Now,” he said, “we come to the most interesting question. Why did you decide to enlist?”
Kamuhi took a second to respond. “I guess you could say I was ready to enlist. I had been young and footloose for long enough, and I wanted to find something more rewarding than what I was doing.”
Marochh’s ears twitched again. “Do you find ThreeCon more rewarding now, Hailoaka?”
“Not all the time, sir, no.”
“You didn’t like boot camp.” It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t think any of us actually liked it, sir.”
“But you had a harder time than most. You had to go through it twice.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I think it was because it was so hard for me to learn to take an order without questioning it.”
“But you haven’t learned to do that, Hailoaka,” the admiral said. “You questioned me just now.”
“No, sir, I’m sorry to contradict you, but I didn’t question you. I declined to answer you, even when ordered.”
“And how is that different from what you learned in boot camp?”
“In boot camp they told me to do things that I thought were foolish or utterly meaningless, like standing on one leg for several minutes, or scrubbing the floor with a tiny brush. I had to learn to say yes sir or yes ma’am and just do it, rather than expecting them to justify the order. It was very hard for me to give up the decision of whether something was worth doing, but I finally learned to do it. You, on the other hand, ordered me to do something I know is wrong.”
“That’s how you see it, Hailoaka?”
“Yes, sir.”
The admiral tapped some keys and then looked up. “Now we come to training camp. You were on New Iberia for over a year. Tell me about your training.”
Kamuhi related some of the training exercises he had gone through.
Next the admiral asked about Kamuhi’s training in the Security Office at the training base in New Iberia. Kamuhi was expecting a probing question about his fight with Sukarno, but Marochh never mentioned it. Kamuhi realized that Guhlhan had never put the incident in his file. He felt a rush of affection for the Miloran officer who had taught him so much.
“Did you enjoy your time in Security?” Marochh asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why?”
“I suppose it was because there was an immediate reward. You got assigned to a problem, and you took care of it. Also, it was something I knew nothing about, so I learned a lot there.”
The Shuratanian nodded and moved on to OPI. There were some questions about specific classes, answers Kamuhi had given, questions he had raised. Then Marochh asked him about teaching.
“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, sir,” Kamuhi said.
“Why did you find it such a challenge?”
Kamuhi deliberated. “Well, for one thing, it was difficult for me to comprehend how simple I had to make a new concept for the students to understand it. I’ve had very little experience in working with people who had no natural talent for a task. I’ve certainly worked with other people on the job before, and in tutoring, as I said, but they always had a basic grasp of the subject.”
