Chapter 12

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Basher put a hand on the girl’s – the fake’s head and pushed her into the back of his car. The little lemur thing on his shoulder nimbly climbed down and settled in her lap before he shut the door. He didn’t have the first idea how to deal with that.

At least she was being quiet now, which he was glad of. He was already edgy from his run down with the fake last week, and if this one provoked him he wasn’t sure he could control himself.

She looked so young. That was all he could think when she ran out of the shadows of the loading bay. She didn’t look more than eighteen or nineteen, which meant the Rik probably took her when she was only ten or eleven.

He slid into the front of the car and placed his hand on the plate to start it. His fingers were trembling slightly.

A quick glance in the back showed the girl, the fake, looking back over her shoulder to the ship. Her curly brown hair was tied back with a rubber band, but several strands of it lay against her cheek, brushing the Spo tattoo. Her skin was a medium brown and he couldn’t immediately place her ethnicity – Creole, perhaps? The tattoo stood out pure white against her skin.

It was the Spo cadet mark, and how dumb was this Rik to get that tattoo instead of the wrist one? She – It – must have been out of contact with the other Rik for a while, to make such an obvious mistake. Regular humans out in the galaxy received a wrist tattoo, to prove that they were really from Earth. Basher had one, as did the other detectives who worked at the various embassies. He’d seen a few Rik with fake wrist tattoos, but it was fairly easy to tell the difference.

He was still surprised at how young this one was. He hadn’t caught any fakes under thirty until her. Usually the Rik preferred to steal adult bodies when they switched, because the brain kept a lot of its working memory – particularly language. An adult’s vocabulary and experience gave them a lot more to work with than a child.

Sometimes when Basher thought about his job too hard he felt ill. And he had had every intention of passing this Rik off to Faal right away, as a sort of good will gesture. He’d checked with his superiors on Earth, and they had no inclination to harbor a Rik who’d been engaging in criminal activity against another species. “Let the Merith have it,” had been their consensus.

Basher had wondered if they were more motivated by fear of a political conflict with a powerful Merith than they were willing to admit, but overall he agreed with them. The Rik were troublemakers wherever they went. It wasn’t his job to protect them from the consequences of their actions.

“Thank goodness,” the girl said suddenly, as they edged into the descent tunnel, and began to drift downwards in the antigravity shaft. The huge shipping cavern was lost from view, and she finally turned around to face forward.

“I know you think I’m lying,” her voice was halting, as if she couldn’t quite remember the words. “But I needed to get away from Faal. So thank you. I – I can’t tell you how good it is to talk to another human. I hardly – I haven’t – wow, it’s been so long since I’ve spoken English – ”

“Save it,” Basher said. “Let me guess. It’s been so long since you saw humans that your language skills are rusty? And goodness, you may just have forgotten some details about your life on Earth. Some mean alien tricked you into fleeing Earth, but you’ve been trying so hard to get back. Am I close?” His voice was sharp and sarcastic.

He should have passed this one off to Faal, but when he’d seen her, he just couldn’t. His first reaction to her had been as one human to another, and though he’d almost immediately realized she must be a fake (the Spo kept vigilant records of their cadets), he couldn’t shake off that feeling. It had made him prevaricate to Faal and put off the inevitable.

Silence in the backseat. They drifted straight down, with that sinking elevator feeling, and he watched the cars in adjacent tunnels drifting upward.

“Is that such a common story?” she asked.

“It’s such a fake story, is what it is.” He settled back into his seat as their car began to slow, queuing above the eight exit slots. “I’ve heard too many variations and I’m not going to have that conversation. You’re not doing yourself any good.” He forced himself not to look at her again. Her wounded expression was an act. He wasn’t hurting her.

“But there must be some way to prove I’m not a Rik.” Her voice was getting stronger. “You must have some objective way to show it or you couldn’t prosecute me.”

She paused, but Basher didn’t reply. The innocent act was nauseating. He steered the car toward the Spo embassy.

“Idiots,” she said suddenly. “The Spo are such idiots. I was with them for months and they never thought to warn us that there are body-stealing aliens out there? They were all, ‘We can give you the best education of the sentient worlds, blah, blah, blah.’ We were supposed to be so freaking grateful for the opportunity. And yet they forgot to add, ‘Hey, watch out for backstabbing instructors and body-stealing Rik.’”

Basher flicked another glance at her. “Really? That’s the story you’re going with? That you’re one of the Spo cadets? They keep records, you know. They don’t just let cadets wander off.”

The girl was breathing heavily now, angered. It was a very good effect.

“I hope they do have records! Then I can prove that one of their horrible instructors sold me to Faal. He’s a collector of exotic animals, and he’s angry that I escaped.”

“Well, as you stole one of those exotic animals I hardly blame him for being angry.”

He heard the girl grind her teeth as the car slowed to a stop in front of the formal entrance to the Spo embassy. An arch of white rock towered over the door, and two Spo guards squatted on either side.

Basher opened the back door and held the fake’s arm as she awkwardly got out, still handcuffed. She whimpered as she straightened and Basher wondered if she was trying to gain his pity.

The lemur climbed up onto her shoulder and looked around with large, unblinking eyes.

 It was cute, he had to admit. It didn’t really look like a lemur, the proportions of the body were wrong. It was more rodent-like, similar to a squirrel, but with a skinnier tail. And the eyes and hands were too big...

Basher shook his head. It was an alien animal. If he tried too hard to make it fit a terrestrial pattern he'd make himself crazy.

One of the Spo guards stepped forward to wrap his long fingers around the girl’s other arm so that Basher could let go and get his token from his pocket.

The girl misunderstood, and jerked away from the Spo. She tripped on Basher’s foot and fell backward, tumbling to the road. The lemur thing jumped off with a yelp as she fell, and perched on top of the car.

 “Don’t leave me with the Spo,” the girl said. “Faal will force them to give me back! There must be some way I can prove to you that I’m human.” Her voice was panicked, and he instinctively put a hand under her elbow as he helped her get back on her feet.

“I’m not leaving you here. I just have to unlock the door. Then I’ll escort you to a cell and you’ll have time to prove you’re human.”

She looked like she was on the verge of tears, and Basher forced himself to look away. If the woman last week had been a good actress, this girl was phenomenal. It would be horribly easy to believe her.

When the Spo had hold of her again, Basher pressed his electronic token to the spot on the door where it would read his electronic signature.

The girl took a shuddering breath, then another, as Basher opened the door.

He kept her in front of him as they walked down the hall, and she seemed to have recovered her self-possession. And for some reason that he didn’t analyze too much, Basher found himself talking.

“The Spo only have a few containment cells. They used to only need them occasionally, when a Spo got in criminal trouble on Selta. They’d lock him up here for extradition to their homeworld. But since the Rik/Human trouble, the cells have been getting a lot more use.”

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

Basher shut his mouth. He never shared information with the Rik, what was wrong with him? Did he honestly think her story was possible, or was he just responding because, and this was a sobering thought, because he was attracted to her?

Basher grimaced. He’d never had that problem before. His knowledge of Rik cruelty and deception completely wiped out anything like that.

He silently took the first right and then led her down a flight of stairs into the processing area. Against the far wall were rows of waist high lockers, and to either side were one-way windows showing the first two containment rooms.

There were four containment rooms altogether, and all were full or almost full now. The first cell only held five Rik, which was where he would put this girl. Those five were sitting cross-legged on the floor, in a line between the bunk beds. He’d caught them several weeks before.

“You’ll have to leave all your things here,” Basher told the girl. He opened one of the lockers and put her bag inside. “If you’re really human, you’ll get it back.”

He surprised himself again. He hadn’t meant to say that, and certainly hadn’t said it to anyone else he’d brought here.

“The lemur thing will have to go in a cage,” he added.

“He can’t stay with me?”

“No. Just put him right in here.” Next to the lockers were four large cages, and the bars were close enough together to keep the lemur inside. Alien pests were sometimes a problem on Selta, and if they couldn’t be immediately identified, they had to be stored for a while. These cages were usually for that purpose, but they’d do for this animal as well.

“He’ll be lonely,” she said.

“He’ll be fine, I’ll – never mind. Just put him in the cage.” He’d almost said that he would check on her pet.

“It’s okay, Kit,” she said softly. She gently pried him off her shoulder and placed him in the cold cage.

Basher slammed the door before the lemur could jump out.

“Okay. You go in here.” He gestured to the cell with five Rik.

“These are all Rik?” she asked, as if that had just occurred to her.

He opened the door to the cell.

“They aren’t dangerous, are they?”

Basher just looked at her. Her questions kept tripping him up. They weren’t quite right for a fake, but they weren’t quite right for a human either, or at least, so he thought. Maybe he’d forgotten what a human’s reactions should be.

“Just go in,” Basher said, not wanting to get sucked into this game any further.

She hesitated. “What’s your name?”

He didn’t answer. He wanted to shove her in the door, but he didn’t want to touch her if he could avoid it.

My name is Claire,” she said. She half reached out her hand, and Basher deliberately stepped back.

“Go in,” he repeated.

 She dropped her hand and he closed the door on her as fast as he could.

He could see her through the one-way glass, standing just inside the door, and he was relieved that she could not see him. If she was a fake, she was darn good, and he didn’t want her to see that she’d shaken him.

She was watching the five Rik meditate on the floor with a frozen look on her face. They didn’t open their eyes or respond to her at all, and Basher could see her shift her weight uncertainly from foot to foot. Finally she moved carefully, almost on tiptoe, to the closest bunk, and sank down on the bed.

She tucked her feet under her, and rubbed her side as if in pain.

Could she really be human? Basher frowned. The odds were very, very low, but it was possible.

The Spo had taken precautions to make sure that the Rik never got a hold of any of their cadets. Each cadet class had a mentor who was personally responsible for the lives of his cadets, and if a cadet was lost – well, it would be a big deal. Most likely this girl was lying about being a cadet. Perhaps she had seen the recent videos of the trial featuring other kids her age with the Spo tattoo on their cheek. She’d tried to copy it, not knowing how distinctive it was.

And yet...

What if the girl had been a cadet and was sold to Faal? Basher couldn’t even imagine that. Aliens still gave him nightmares on occasion, and he was a capable, adult man, who joined them of his own free will. How would it be to have no power, sold to some alien and completely cut off from Earth? Basher shuddered. Probably it was just a story. He hoped it was.

The girl looked up just then, staring at him, and Basher jumped.

No, he reminded himself quickly, she can’t see me. She was looking at her reflection in the mirror.

As he watched, her nostrils flared and her eyes turned red. She bent her head down on her knees, and he could see the tears running down her cheeks. His hand was on the door before he got a grip on himself.

No. Don’t be stupid, Basher told himself. A Rik could cry as well as anyone, this wasn’t proof of anything. Basher took his hand off the door. He needed some distance, fast.

His Spo partner was in the processing room, peering at the lemur thing. "I'm not certain where this comes from but it is very appealing, isn't it?"

Basher had yet to see any form of sentimentality from his partner, so this was a first. He paused to look in the cage again.

"I guess," Basher said reluctantly, as the lemur stretched its hand out to him. Basher touched its six fingers gently and realized his own hand was shaking. He quickly dropped it to his side, but he was sure his partner saw.

"Are you ready to greet the human delegation?" his partner asked. "They should be here in less than an hour. They’ve already arrived on Selta."

"Right, right.” He would have been back hours ago if he hadn't had to investigate the ship and argue with that Spo and get Claire... Basher shook his head. "I'm going to clean up, I'll meet you in the reception hall."

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