Page 55 of Defiance
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23
“Ms Halloway! Ms Halloway! Give us a statement!”
The cacophony disoriented me, making it difficult to tell up from down, right from left. Did paparazzi usually have this dizzying effect? Flashing lights, bright spots that dug into my retinas, and the buzzing of drones overhead was panic-inducing. I tripped on the stones in between plush carpets more than once, unable to orient myself or even pick out a path as we fought our way to the palace gates.
Novak knew exactly what to do. He took my hand and Sath followed suit. Hjarna and advenans were both tall species, so even if I wasn’t a shrimp, they used their shoulders and crest to shade me from the snap drones and vid feeds.
“Carpet in two paces… That’s it. A few hands ahead. They’ll touch your arms and clothes. Just kids, they’re all clear. Good girl, careful of the step...” He murmured in my ear while his eyes dilated and hiscolearaswelled, taking in the entire scene with all of his senses. One of his eyes glowed blue with information that streamed through his optical bionics, screening the crowd for weapons.
Something sharp caught on my clothes and I gasped, spinning. There was a venandi woman holding a curious whelp past a roped-off queue. She withdrew the child with an angry chitter, staring at my torn sleeve with worry.
“It’s okay,” I told her, my voice trembling from the adrenaline. I waved but Novak swept me up again, his tail cutting a path through the mingling crowds by snapping the ground like a bull-whip to tell people we were coming through.
“What’s with the paparazzi?!” I shouted. “No one’s come up to us at all until now!”
“Hja Qiyua is open by invitation only!” Sath yelled over me. “It wasn’t this bad because none of these people were allowed on the surface until today.”
We spilled into the courtyard past the gates and I stumbled to a stop. Novak pulled me sideways behind some ferns where the drones couldn’t capture footage and examined my torn sleeve. He breathed it in with a critical glint to his stare, craning his neck to look back at the mother and whelp in anger.
“It was the wee one,” I sighed, regaining my composure. “I’m fine.”
“We should have been told,” he hissed. Sath’s frown tightened.
“Yes, we should have,” he agreed. “I will address the matter, hm, with Director Caher.”
The palace’s central courtyard oozed music and lights, and when we came upon it, the scene was decadent. Banners draped the archways above, swinging in the late evening breeze. They represented planets and moons where HIXBS had a presence. I recognized the banners for Yaspur and Dharatee right away.
There were also a disconcerting number of human statues made of blue marbled sandstone with fulgurite jewelry and eyes. The lightning glass from the desert was a dark and stormy purple that made their human eyes look a bit more like their hjarna hosts. Most of the sculptures were classical, but I recognized Olivia Atarian among them. There was also one of a man in fitted shorts with shaggy hair and a mustache that screamed seventies. Sath told me proudly that it was a recoveredsnap from the golden disc of data Earth had ejected more than fifty years prior.
“You mean the Voyager I?” I asked in disbelief.
“Yes! You’ve heard of it?”
Had I heard of it…
We laughed as I critiqued the party. To everyone else, it must have felt exotic and sophisticated. I could imagine that the little biscuits covered with something like cheese and pepperoni would be a delicacy of advanced culinary engineering, but to me they were American bagel bites. Artifacts were displayed on pedestals interspersed with cocktail tables where people socialized and ate. Some of them were objects from Earth, like the cracked cell phone with a single ear bud. Others were research projects or reconstructions. My favorite was a collection of “land vehicles” that looked like Hot Wheels toys but were actually the real deal in miniature.
I was in the middle of showing the engineer where the button was to pop the gas cap when Chairwoman Guei strode in to scattered applause. Her crest gleamed as she swept through the crowd and straight for me.
“Charlotte, so good to see you. I heard about the crowds outside. Oh my, yes, I see it must have been true.”
The hair stood on my neck and arms as Guei approached, fussing with my torn sleeve before I’d even been able to greet her. She was dressed in mint green, a fringe of champagne silver cascading from the top of her crest to lay elegantly along the curve of her forehead. A statement necklace hung from her neck in the shape of a peak lapel, the kind you’d see tailored on a custom suit.
I hadn’t realized how disturbing it was to see human things outside of context, but my eyes fixed on that necklace and my throat went tight. Like we were entertainment for the wealthy.Who we were didn’t matter nearly so much as the power that human access represented.
“Good evening, Chairwoman Guei. It’s good to see you again,” I said in a wooden tone.
“Terrible, awful business, all those crowds,” she said with a distinct frown. Her eyes landed on my face for the first time and paused, looking at the powder on my forehead. She breathed a laugh, smiling at Sath. “You work quickly, my boy. La?we, wasn’t it?”
Sath bowed his crest. “Yes, sir.”
Then Guei waved a hand at Novak without looking at him. In a single flutter of her elegant hand, he was dismissed. Trivial. Of no further use. She took me by the arm as I opened my mouth to protest, but Novak bowed his head and retreated to the wall.
“Don’t worry, yes?” she cooed, seeing how I craned my neck to look back at him. “We are very secure here. Only approved feed drones are permitted. Ferulis’s pet needn’t bother us.”
She motioned up to several quiet drones hovering discreetly above the arches. We were being broadcast live, I realized. I forced my balled fists to relax and focused on my breathing, letting her treatment of Novak slide off my shoulders just like the buttery silk of my sleeves.
