28
THOSE WHO DO NOT LEARN FROM HISTORY
I CAN THINK OF at least three war crimes you’re committing,” Ferdinand said mildly outside the ossuary.
“I can name all the rituals of our ancestors that say those laws are bullshit,” Stephanie snarled.
“Yeah, those were made when we saw other species as beneath us,” he replied.
“Or food!” Tina added helpfully. “My great-uncle still called them masticatables. He joined the mountain when the treaties were signed. He couldn’t stand the idea of masticatables being honored in the castle by his grandson. It was for the best, really.”
“This is why others don’t fully trust us yet,” Ferdinand said. “We signed treaties after the War of Blood and Quartz and paid a lot of reparations to the people who never received the remains of their dead.”
“A lot of reparations,” Tina echoed. “Father had to put off his diamond palace plans because of what we paid.”
“If you’re still trying to stop me, why are you with me?” Stephanie asked, shouting out loud.
Ferdinand and Tina glanced at each other, and Tina spoke first. “We wanted you to be absolutely sure.”
“Why?”
Tina looked at the door. “They know.”
“They know? Who told them?”
“Your grandfather,” Ferdinand said. “He thinks if you won’t listen to him, then maybe you will listen to them.”
Stephanie swore in vibrations, which she was sure the station herself would have felt if she were not in the process of breaking down. “Why is it ethically wrong only when I do it? He hasn’t lasted as long as he has without the occasional questionable action.”
“That does seem unfair,” Tina said, thinking.
Stephanie picked up the dripping bag she had left by the entrance to the ossuary and clutched it tightly. “This is mine, by all laws ancient. It will be gone soon and then it will have done no one any good! I’m going in. I will not stop for a bunch of super-old pebbles judging me for doing exactly what they did, just at a time they don’t approve of.”
THE CROWD HAD turned from a river flowing steadily in one direction to a Charybdis of a whirlpool, with a tight knot of violence in the center. A Gneiss pushed his way up to the blockage and shoved all of the mob into the side tunnel so they could keep up with the evacuation.
Mallory and Xan watched, stunned, as the group separated like tired bar fighters, glaring at each other, nursing injured limbs, some bleeding from several cuts. They consisted of three Gurudevs, five Phantasmagore, one relatively small Gneiss, and two humans.
Calliope got to her feet shakily. She was bleeding from several scrapes and a cut on her head, and Mallory was pretty sure her arm was broken from the way she held it.
Mallory stepped forward to check on the humans, but Xan grabbed her shoulder.
“No, Calliope is dangerous right now.”
“She’s injured! She can’t hurt anyone with that arm,” Mallory said.
“She’s a soldier with very specific skills,” he said. “Trust me.”
The other human, who wasn’t getting up as quickly, was Kathy. She didn’t look as beaten up as Calliope but was clearly hurting, holding the back of her head as she got her knees under her. She didn’t raise her head, but her blonde hair stuck to her cheek with sweat and blood.
Xan stepped forward slowly. “All right, folks, go on with your evacuation. I’ll take care of the humans,” he said to the aliens, several of whom seemed to be considering engaging the humans again.
“She attacked us,” one of the Phantasmagore said.
“There’s a lot of chaos right now; no one is attacking anyone with malice,” he said.
The Phantasmagore snarled and turned the color of the wall.
“Look out!” Mallory called, but Calliope shot out her good arm and grabbed at the air. The Phantasmagore reappeared, his neck in Calliope’s fist. He had her in size, but she had dug her fingers in to isolate his windpipe, one of the softer parts of the rough-skinned alien’s body.
She hadn’t even looked at him.
“Anyone else?” she shouted.
As if in response, the station silenced her alarms. Everyone stopped in confusion. Then the crowd let go a sigh of tension, which Mallory also hadn’t been aware she had been carrying. They still moved, but without the same urgency.
The Phantasmagore twitched in Calliope’s hand.
The brawl’s other participants backed up. The Gneiss paused and then reentered the tide of people. Xan stepped closer to Calliope.
“Hey, H2Oh, let’s calm down,” he said. “Can you let the nice person go?”
“He’s not nice! He’s like that asshole we killed!” Calliope shouted. “It’s Buck all over again!”
“What is she talking about?” Mallory demanded.
“It’s not how it sounds,” Xan said, but he was staring at Calliope with a face slack with shock. Not denial, shock.
“It’s exactly as it sounds,” Calliope shouted back. “Buck the Fuck pissed us off, and we killed him and his patrol.”
“It wasn’t us; it was the Bad Guy, remember?” Xan said softly, coming closer. “Remember the Bad Guy and your fanfic? You loved him. He attacked Buck and then killed that patrol.”
Calliope’s face softened.
Xan took another step. “But this guy wasn’t that asshole. It was probably a misunderstanding. Right? Can you let him go so we can get you to safety before this hallway is sucked out of a breach?”
Abruptly she let go of the Phantasmagore. He fell back, clutching his throat. He abruptly disappeared, but Mallory was pretty sure he was running away from them, not at them.
Calliope sagged, and Xan was behind her, holding her so she didn’t fall. “It’s okay, Cal.”
“H2Oh,” she corrected. “You saved me twice. I saved you twice. We’re even.”
“I’m not keeping score,” he said softly.
“We didn’t mean to, Xan,” she said, head drooping.
“I know we didn’t. You’re not a bad person, H2.”
Jesus, what happened to them?
Mallory ran to her aunt, who was on all fours by now. She crouched by her and put her hand on her back.
“What happened?”
“Is that all you ever ask?” Aunt Kathy said to the floor. Blood dripped steadily from her face. “She grabbed me, pulled me into the group, and then just started punching. Then the aliens got involved.” She choked back a sob.
Mallory looked at Calliope, who was sitting against the wall now, talking to Xan.
“Are you sure it was Calliope? It could have been another human; they had just left.” She could picture Phineas doing it, but Lovely had admitted to more skill than her slight frame showed.
“I don’t know. All I know is I was here, and then there was . . . chaos.”
“Can you stand?”
Kathy looked up at her, and Mallory shied back from the rage in her eyes. Her nose was bleeding, and blood covered the right side of her face from a deep cut above her eye. Kathy grabbed her arm and held tight.
“Chaos follows you,” she said, her voice ragged and low. “Murder follows you. Your mother was cursed, and you got it, too. I thought I could raise you to erase that taint she put on you; I thought my love could wash away that stain. But you grew up as rotten as she was.”
Mallory pulled back, shaken. Kathy had never been convincing in showing her love for Mallory, but this was a new level of cruel.
“That lower-class house cleaner and her goddamn feather duster,” Kathy said, still holding Mallory with her fist. “I hated her bringing such filth in my house. The filth from her job, the filth that was you. And then she died, and I still wasn’t free of her because there was you.”
Mallory fell back on her butt in shock. She broke Aunt Kathy’s grip when she did so, and Kathy’s hand fell to her lap, making her bracelet jangle.
She added a new charm. Is that a lizard? Her aunt would never buy a lizard charm. Lizards didn’t match her suburban-mom, pastel style.
Hang on, when had she gotten that back?
She looked up at the ceiling and noticed several blue Sundry crawling on it. Evacuating? Or watching?
Her head hurt; the colors were too bright; there was too much information. She got to her feet and left them, Xan nursing his army buddy and apparent co-murderer and Kathy on the floor, still spitting bile and blood at her.
Something really bothered her. She didn’t know what had started the fight in the hall, and no one seemed in the right frame of mind to answer questions.
Xan had clearly withheld violent secrets from her. She hadn’t liked Kathy much but had never known that Kathy hated her with such animalistic rage.
Why is she here, then?
She had to get to the ossuary. There was nothing for her here. If she had to do this by herself, so be it. It wasn’t like anything had changed.
“LOSING YOUR NERVE?” Ferdinand asked. “You can still change your mind.”
Stephanie had stood in front of the door for a considerable amount of time. Ferdinand and Tina waited for her to make her decision.
From behind the door she could feel the whispers, the condemnation, the disdain.
“They are not happy to see us,” Tina said helpfully.
Footsteps approached, soft steps of a creature of minuscule mass.
“Hello, Mallory,” Ferdinand said. “You are not here at a good time.”
Stephanie couldn’t read human emotions, but Mallory looked almost Gneiss-like in the way her face wasn’t moving. She liked Mallory this way.
“Well, I’m glad to see you,” Tina said. “Stephanie is making a decision that will change things forever and enrage our people. Do you want to try to stop her too?”
Her eyes slid from Tina to land on Stephanie. “I don’t think I can make someone like you stop anything.”
“I was kidding,” Tina said, laughing. “I know you can’t. We’re much stronger than you.”
“No, I meant I couldn’t stop Stephanie. She has that kind of personality where she leaps into things because planning will fuck it up.” Her face looked human again as she curled her mouth. Stephanie remembered that was a happy look. “We’re a lot alike that way. And I’d love to piss off the ancestors with you, but I am on my way somewhere. Can you let me in to get to the shuttle? I need to look at the Earth shuttle for some clues.”
“No,” Ferdinand said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen when we go in.”
Mallory shrugged.
“Then let me go in first. If they kill me, then great, I won’t have to deal with this shit anymore. If they don’t kill me—hang on, why am I worried about things killing me? Are you telling me there are zombie Gneiss in there?”
“I don’t understand that word,” Tina said. “A dead monster that moves, that’s not right. They’re just resting until they wake up and reform.”
“Or change form,” Stephanie said.
“Or change form,” Tina repeated.
“But Stephanie has angered them—” Ferdinand began.
“A lot!” Tina interrupted.
“Yes, a lot,” he said. “So they may decide to wake early to stop her.”
“They don’t have a problem with me, so can I go in? Like I said, I don’t care what happens to me. There’s really nothing left for me here or at home. Everything has fallen apart and about the only goddamn thing I have is this murder case to solve.” Mallory began to leak from her eyes.
“All right, go on in,” Ferdinand said.
“What?” Stephanie asked.
“She’s right. This is between you and them, not her. She can just go on through to the shuttle bay. I’ll let them know she’s coming.” He reached over and pressed the button to open the door to the ossuary. The button would only respond to the geological makeup of a Gneiss hand, so no other species could enter without permission. The door slid aside.
“Thanks,” Mallory said. “And good luck, Stephanie, on whatever ancestors you’re defying. Give them hell.”
“Close the door,” Stephanie said. “I still need to think.”
No sounds of carnage came from the ossuary. She found herself happy that she hadn’t sent her friend to her death. She was fond of the human, she decided.
Just as she had reached her decision, more soft sounds came down the hall.
“What now?” she yelled so any species could hear her.
Xan was leading two very wet humans down the hall. One needed propping up on his shoulders; the other one walked on her own. Everyone but Xan leaked red. Blood, she remembered. And it needed to stay inside the body.
“More humans,” Tina said. “It’s still not a good time. Didn’t you hear?”
“They don’t communicate like we do, Tina,” Stephanie said, annoyed. “None of the hearing races do.”
“Did Mallory come through here?” Xan asked.
“Yes, she had to go to the shuttle bay. Why are you here?”
“We need a place to stay and regroup. We figured Infinity would be a quiet place. I’m sorry we have to walk over your sacred ground to get there.”
“Not sacred or safe for much longer,” Stephanie grumbled. “Just stay out of the way and don’t talk to anyone.”
“It’s a graveyard, isn’t it? Or, at least, everyone inside should be asleep?”
“Not anymore. Stephanie made everyone mad,” Tina said happily.
“You sent Mallory in there with a bunch of angry Gneiss zombies?” Xan asked, his eyes wide.
“There’s that word again,” Tina said. “No, that’s not what they are. I mean they are angry, but not dead monsters.”
“Their quarrel is with me, not her,” Stephanie explained.
“Then will you let us in?”
Tina started to vibrate, and Stephanie lost her temper. “No! I’ve made my decision and I’m going in. No more humans get to scamper in front of me. My time is running out. Do whatever you want; just stay out of my way.”
She stepped forward and opened the door.
They all stared inside, and a small gasp came from behind Stephanie. It was from another human, this one dark like Xan.
“How many more humans are there?” Stephanie demanded.
“Just two of us,” said a large dark human coming up behind the gasping human. “Security said we had to come back here because interior doors sealed when the breach happened.”
“Just. Stay. Back,” Stephanie said slowly.
Inside, the ossuary was awake.