Chapter Ten
Xavier, puffing already, pounded up the trail. I wanted to reach over and strangle Omaara for watching him with her mouth slightly parted and an expression of pained loss on her face. She wasn’t faking, not now, and I didn’t like seeing that.
Xavier was probably just a bit bloated from the zero-gee time in the pod, but I could tell from how he was pushing himself that Ms. Dreya had given him a weigh-in again. Yeah, four foot three was enormous for a not-full-adult-height kid with genetic dwarfism, but the Rockworths should take into account muscle mass. He exercised every single day at least twice to build and maintain muscle. His grandpa had been a wiry lean guy when he used to live on station a couple years ago, but Xavier has a kid’s muscle bulges without all the roundedness stripped off from preflight diet restrictions.
I was once again happy to have the easy life of a Sadou. Nobody gave me weigh-ins. Nobody cared that I towered over Xavier and was probably going to keep growing taller for a while.
The Rockworths were more than wealthy enough that they could’ve allowed their scions to stay back at their headquarters, but it was family tradition for them to join in as mining craft operators, where every kilo of personal body mass mattered. A bare week’s worth of hair growth put tiny brown ringlets all over his head like some Roman Emperor from the history documentaries and he had happy eyes, especially when he looked at me. It was always good to see a friend.
“I thought he’d stay here for at least a few more years,” Omaara said. “Long enough that he’d stop hating me for telling Prof. Azul about the games that one time. It was just one time. Mom told me to do it. That was supposed to get Ms. Dreya to like me so that his family would seriously consider that I might be a good influence who they’d allow to spend time with him long-term. Horrible idea. Now, I’m never ever going to be able to get a job anywhere his family has pull. Serves him right for being so mean though. Now he’s got to go live in low-gee forever.”
I didn’t think Xavier would stop his family from hiring her. “He’s going to have a good life, and he won’t remember you at all. They know how to make low gravity really, really comfortable now, you know?”
I tried not to think of the disgusting vomit, blood, and other unexpected liquids I’d learned lately from the training module for zero-gee station sanitation I’d been working through for my quals.
Omaara flapped a hand at whatever expression I’d made. “For people with real money. For Rockworths. They can make low-gee life good.” Omaara balled up her fists and shook them at me. “If he’d stayed longer, I was going to fight you for him, you know. He deserves a girlfriend who makes a decent effort.”
I wanted to drown Omaara. I turned to her, ready to say something to wipe the expression I expected off her face, but she was looking ready to cry. And so she managed to speak first.
“Well…” Omaara looked me up and down. “Him leaving sucks for you even more than for me.” She looked around the brightening station. You could see the homes rising up to the east and west with the inward curve of our station horizon. “Xavier did like looking at me, but I don’t think the Rockworths were ever going to let him partner up with a tall. So I’ve been doing what I’m supposed to do and meeting lots of other people. You, though”—she shook her head—“that was your only real friend left after those two other stationer families moved to Daphnis.”
I balled up my fist ready to break her nose when the sound of an unoiled door screeing open made Omaara jump. We both tumbled together around back behind Xavier’s place and hid in the only good concealment big enough for us: the inside of his climbing wall exercise gym. The gashes left from the pylon holes in it let us see out, but if we held still enough, it wouldn’t be obvious to anyone stepping outside and looking up around the station that we were in it. Some brats a decade or two ago had vandalized stuff during the night shift and the station still had rules on the books that non-quals weren’t to be out and about before full light or after evening dimming.
“Xavier’s getting busted.”
Omaara hissed at me to be quiet.
We could see him stopped by two men in uniform. I squinted trying to make out which two guys they were. Some of them I could probably talk with later and convince to—
Xavier turned and kicked one in the knee and did something, maybe a punch? The second man doubled over and Xavier was running back this way at his absolute top speed. And, well, I like Xavier. He’s been my friend since forever, but he just doesn’t have long enough legs to be very fast. Both officers, full-sized adults, even if they did have a bit of belly fat on them, caught up to him in no time flat. The one had hold of both Xavier’s arms and was lifting him by them so his toes were only barely touching the ground. I could tell the guy wasn’t going to be able to handle that for long, and he seemed to have no idea what to do about it because the other guy’s voice wasn’t carrying to us, but from his gestures he wanted no part in manhandling a Rockworth kid.
And then Ms. Zeegee arrived.
“Yes! He’s going to be fine now.” I leaned back, all my worries about Xavier getting into more trouble than even the Rockworth name could get him out of vanishing.
“Are you out of your mind?” Omaara gaped at me. “I thought you were his friend!”
I turned my back on Omaara to see how Ms. Zeegee would fix everything. I knew her from the flurry of bright trailing fabric all around her. The lady with all the scarves, and who had gifts or treats for people every time I’d ever seen her, had tromped out of one of the buildings to the south, which was not the place she lived, and wearing a pink business suit stood with one hand on her hip and the other waggling a finger, but not at Xavier. Both the officers released Xavier and backed away.
“See?”
I wished I could hear what was being said. That must’ve been some tongue lashing because Xavier dusted himself off and didn’t even kick dirt at the officers as they left with their backs as rigid as I’ve ever seen grown-ups walk.
“Oh no!” Omaara said. “He’s been gotten by her. We’ve got to save him.” She gave me a look of disgust. “Okay, I’ve got to save him, since you clearly don’t care about your so-called friends.”
I turned expecting to see a wink or a wry grin on Omaara’s face to accompany the odd words, but she was ashen and serious instead.
“She just got him out of a ticket,” I said. There’d been no time for either officer to write anything up and they weren’t allowed to do that later.
Babu had gotten that on the law books. For minor legal violations, the appointed authorities write them up on the spot or not at all. In Susu’s stories, there’d been a particularly nasty station employee years ago (who’d thankfully moved to another station awhile back) who’d been in the habit of issuing “warnings” and then showing up with backdated piles of offenses whenever he got irritated at something someone’s family had done. Petty tyranny would develop wherever people allowed it to.
And so what if that man had never dared to do that to a Sadou? The rules shouldn’t allow it to be done to anyone. And besides, Babu always added, when you let something get done to the people who you don’t like, someday they’ll get a bit more power and it will be done to you too. Fairness is rare as it is; it’s no good letting what little is under your control be unfair as well.
“Ms. Zeegee is nice,” I said.
“Who is? Oh. Your family’s pet name for her.” Omaara gave a deep shudder and dropped her voice as Xavier and Ms. Zeegee started to walk together. They took some time to get back, coming in at an amble instead of Xavier’s usual speedy jog. Xavier leaning towards Zeegee, clearly at ease and delighted.
“That’s Madame de Zuri-Grumft to everyone else. And she’d rather break a kid’s fingers off with her fat mag-enabled boot-heels than move one inch out of the way she’d like to go.”
Omaara shifted to a position in the backyard gym that was better concealed, and I moved with her.
I managed, barely, to suppress a snort mostly because I didn’t want Ms. Zeegee to tease me in front of my family for being out too early in the morning.
I’d heard about the story about Ms. Zeegee that Omaara was talking about. It was very sad that that three-year-old child of one of the station sanitation technicians got a bone in his hand broken when Ms. Zeegee accidentally stepped on it. But Ms. Zeegee had been so, so sad about it, and everyone had had to reassure her for weeks on end that it wasn’t her fault. That had been, what, two years ago almost now? Typical of Omaara to hold a grudge against Ms. Zeegee for something that wasn’t even really the woman’s fault.
“Just an accident,” I said, even though I knew better than to bother to argue with Omaara.
“No.” She’d dropped her voice to a bare whisper, clearly very concerned about Ms. Zeegee seeing her out here. Yeah, technically kids our age had a curfew restricting us against being up and about this early, but everyone knew that was for pushing contractor’s wilder families to get their younger teens home at a decent hour and didn’t really apply to getting up early to do workouts or for missions of mercy for arranging pet sitting. Omaara’s face was pale and her eyes were hard with intent like she didn’t realize any of that. I did match her very low volume as I continued the argument.
“No? Come on.” I tried to come up with what details I’d heard about it. Ms. Zeegee was supposed to start a new position helping out with the administration of qual work. She’d volunteered for it after Mrs. Newberry got sick. Omaara was going to have to interact with her more often than not in the next year or so while I was gone, so…
“I was there, Calypso. I watched her do it. She looked that little boy dead in the eyes and stepped down hard on his hand on purpose because he was trying to get his toy Mars Lander back from where she’d kicked it.”
I gaped. That didn’t match at all with the sort of thing I expected from Ms. Zeegee. It was ridiculous. The kid would’ve told his parents. Omaara would’ve told. Wait.
“Nuh uh.”
“Truth.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“We told everyone.” Omaara voice was very low.
Ms. Zeegee stopped on the path and pulled out a bakery bag.
“She’s nice,” I said. “Look, she’s going to give Xavier cookies or something.”
Xavier flashed bright white teeth and did indeed take a giant bite out of a double chocolate chip cookie.
“I wouldn’t eat so much as a fudge stick from her,” Omaara said. “She’d lace it with something nasty. Out-system drugs or who knows what. She’s a snake and only nice to people who can give her something.”
“You better not tell Ms. Dreya,” I hissed at her.
“Won’t have to, the scale will tell on him unless he skips lunch to make up for it. And his won’t be drugged, she’s bribing him.”
“You’re crazy. What can Xavier give her?” I asked.
“An introduction to the Rockworths,” replied Omaara immediately. “Just like your mom got her an introduction to the Sadou family on Phoebe, what ten years ago?”
Huh. I didn’t think that had happened, but I could see how the gossip might say so. She’d just come back after some time away. I hadn’t known her before, or if I had I’d been too little for her to make any impact on me. I hadn’t been born when she was last living in the Rings.
Omaara, as much as I usually didn’t like her, wasn’t prone to lying about people. Especially not people who could help her out if they had a good opinion of her. I’d have expected her to lie in the other direction on this one. None of this made very much sense to me.
We could hear Xavier and Ms. Zeegee now. Both Omaara and I stopped even whispering.
“You are serious,” Xavier said, louder suddenly as he and Ms. Zeegee came around the last house on the trail.
“Of course, you should visit us at Caelus. We’d love to show you around the place. We have a truly solar-class low-grav entertainment station planned. You could help us by testing it out, tell us what you think of things.”
Xavier nodded his head quickly.
He was at eye level with Ms. Zeegee’s belly. I wouldn’t have noticed, but little hooks for her blouse were undone a lot of the way down.
The light was almost to full bright now, but it was awkward being clearly in-hiding in Xavier’s yard, so I didn’t feel like standing up and dealing with explaining that we’d been hiding and why, so I stayed there.
Xavier waved goodbye at Ms. Zeegee.
She put a hand on his head like she somehow owned him and actually kissed him on the lips before walking away with a weird wiggle to her hips.
Xavier for his part stood frozen on his own doorstep with a deep reddish flush on his face. He went inside without looking around for Omaara and me even once.
But when Xavier’s door shut, Ms. Zeegee’s walk switched immediately back to her typical fast moving no nonsense near-trot.
“That was weird,” I told Omaara.
“That was Madame,” Omaara replied, grim. “I could’ve told you she’d do that. Anyone could’ve told you she’d do that. The question is only if Xavier’s dad is going to let her have him visit her on Caelus or not.”
“She’s not going to be on Caelus; she lives here,” I pointed out.
“She’ll have a sister or a friend or just another Caelus employee exactly like her over there to welcome him and whoever else they can convince from the Rockworths to go with them. They are the sales team,” she said with deep unhappiness. “They are all like that.”
“How do you know? You were born here.”
“My family hasn’t been in the Rings forever,” Omaara said. “Don’t you know that Dad video-interviewed with Caelus before coming out here? He and Mom met while doing the rounds interviewing with the various stations representatives back in-System. Lots of your newer residents got together that way. And folks came here because they like here better than there. So don’t you go ruin it.”
I want credit for not punching Omaara in the face.
Xavier would’ve hit her, even if it meant Ms. Dreya would message his family about antisocial behavior and earn him a lecture from Chawla Station Council on proper respect towards the contractor families among us.
“I’m not going to ruin it.”
“Yeah, because you’re just a little kid. And your whole family is going off to play ambassador at Phoebe without any worries at all about the rest of us back home.”
Once again, I didn’t punch her. “Susu and Babu will— Well, they don’t have to show up for Council meetings all the time. Mr. Petrie-Xi will be fine. He’s been Dad’s deputy since forever.” Omaara tried to do that blank unconcerned look, but I could tell she was really worried and even more angry.
If I had hit her, she would’ve hit back. And then I’d have gotten all the lectures I’d imagined for Xavier plus also losing a fist fight.
That annoyed me and reminded me of the real problem: Chameleon.