"Like when our dinosaurs died." She was smiling.
"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe there never were large beasts there. Who knows? Anyway, it came up to us. Dad called them 'homospacians', just to annoy Mother." Lynette laughed. "He came walking up and started to fiddle with the clasps on Dad's boots. He looked like he was trying to figure them out. Then he made a sound and others came, all looking us up and down, all chattering, some of them testing the taste of our suits with long tongues. Dad picked one up carefully and looked at it. It got mad and batted at Dad's hands, but when Dad opened his grip it didn't leave. And they just stood there looking at each other." It was one of the best memories I have of my father and bringing it up also brought a pain. I missed Dad most of all.
I cleared my throat to keep the pain in check. "Anyway we were surrounded, and it was the first time I really thought about being surrounded by people, having more than just twenty seven in a tiny ship as a life."
"And then you met Little Blob."
"Yes."
"And...I'm sorry. What was her name?"
The pain tightened. I know I should have given back what she gave me. I should have allowed her the same personal access she allowed me. She cried. She was vulnerable. But I couldn't. I just lay there, looking at the sky, trying to think of anything but Dad, my family, my friends.
"Wow, you really meant it when you said it was off limits. That's fine." Lynette's voice didn't sound like it was fine. She sounded exactly like Daniel when the crew would tease him about his cooking.
"Lynette..."
"No. I get it. Too personal."
Now Lynette sounded like Ashnahta when I wouldn't do as she asked. She looked like her, too. Made the same face, crossed her arms just like her. Suddenly the similarities overcame the differences. Girls are the same the universe over. Dad always said so, said it was why Mother and Morhal clashed so often. I never understood it until that exact moment. What do you know? The old man was right. I couldn't help it and laughed.
She frowned. "What's so funny?" I laughed harder, because I knew what she was going to say. I knew the scene. I could call it. I knew the look, the posture...everything.
I finally found something familiar!
Lynette looked at me with her eyebrows up and slowly shook her head. "You've cracked. He thought you might, and sure enough you have."
I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling something deep inside relaxed for the first time since I arrived at Utopia. "Who thought I'd crack?"
"Marlon. He thinks you're slow and weak and stupid."
I sighed. Way to kill a good mood. "I am slow and weak. That's changing. I'm not stupid, though."
"That's what I told him. But he says you keep failing his tests."
I had to defend myself against that one. "Have you ever tried to pass one of his little tests? He wanted me to rewire the circuit board of an older model HuTA, one that's about ten levels above the only one I've ever known by the way."
Lynette nodded. "Yep. Sounds like Marlon. What did he want you to make it do?"
"Convert the fah'ti Qitani signals from whatever the Qitani used to something our own communications devices can understand."
She swore and pulled out her holocom, then began typing something into it.
"What?"
"He's not supposed to be doing that."
"He said everyone who's anyone is trying to crack it."
Lynette made a frustrated little squeak. "Haven't you figured out yet that he's not anyone? He's about two levels too low to even know about it existing!"
"But you know."
She shot me a quick look, then went back to keying something in. She was typing angry. I suddenly felt a pang of guilt, a little loyalty to my tormentor. I know how girls are when they're mad. I can't imagine how much worse it is when it's your sister, someone who knows everything about you and every button to push. When she finished she turned to me and began grilling me like a seasoned interrogator. Then I really did feel for Marlon.
"How much work have you done on it?"
"I don't know. A couple hours the last few days. We've only been trying since Wednesday."
"On what?"
"The HuTA."
"Anything else?"
"No."
"No holos?"
"No."
"No stations?"
"No."
"Base terminals?"
"I said nothing else. Just the HuTA."
"And it was a retired bot?"
I shrugged. "How the hell would I know? Marlon gave it to me and told me to try and work it out."
"And what was he doing?"
"I don't know. Something with Ralph."
"And did you crack it?"
I had to laugh. "Would he call me an idiot if I did?"
"Quite possibly."
"No, I didn't crack it. I didn't get the bot to do anything but spit out jokes instead of history lessons."
"So you did rework it."
"Some."
"Who knows about it?"
"I don't know."
"Was anyone else around when you were doing that?"
"I don't think so."
"And where?"
"What do you mean? In our quarters."
"No," she said in a frustrated tone. "I mean where. Gym? Bedroom?"
"Oh. Uh, Marlon and Ralph were in Ralph's room, I think, and I was left to work in my room." In my closet space, actually.
See, I actually did have an idea we weren't supposed to be fiddling like that. Ralph broke it down for me without actually saying so. Even if he hadn't, I'm not too stupid to figure out that we were working on a project outside the scope of the cameras. Or not notice the buckets of sweat dripping down Marlon's face. Or pick up on the fact that the words were different than the looks and hand gestures. I got it.
The thing was, I had no idea what I was doing. I believe Marlon assumed that I know the most about the Qitani and that would most likely mean I could understand their programming. Ralph probably figured the same thing. While it was sort of true, I didn't exactly spend my time with Ashnahta learning the ins and outs of Qitani geekery, as Stefan called it. I knew the basics of human programming, just enough to keep a now ancient ship running in space, and that's it. I didn't even understand the wormhole jumping specifics that Mother was always trying to hammer into my head. If I couldn't even grasp our tech, why would anyone think I could understand a completely foreign system?
I can read Qitani passably. I sat in on lessons with Ashnahta. After struggle, I learned to speak it, though the words are not natural for our mouths to form. I am good at math, but that's only because it's so critical in Qitani trading and Ashnahta and I made quite a name for ourselves exploring the far reaches using my TrekMan, places where other Qitani could not travel deep in the marshlands. So I suppose it wasn't a terrible thought that I may know more.
Perhaps if I had more of the fah'ti side to go on, I would have been a bigger help. Marlon's access was...well, let's just tell it like it really was. He had stolen intel. He made a program to run under the radar and snatch data streams at random intervals from the lab working to crack the fah'ti code. To call the info sketchy would be building it up more than it was. The sum total we had to work with were a few thousand lines of actual code in Qitani runes, a chart, and what looked to be someone's supply list for the lab cafeteria. Not a lot.
"Just try," Marlon said.
I did. I translated some of the Qitani words, but others were beyond me. I had an idea that they might be acronyms, but without knowing more technical terms, I couldn't back that up. I spent hours trying and in the end figured I better do something, so I had the HuTA go through an old comedy routine Dad had programmed on mine to entertain me when I got bored. It was all in there anyway, you just have to know where to look.
My mistake was bringing it up to Lynette. I assumed she knew about it. As she sat there firing off questions fast as a proton jet, I thought maybe Marlon was right after all. Maybe I really was an idiot.
Her holo beeped and she picked it up. She scanned the words, her face turning red. Another familiarity, though this one not very comforting. I stood. I knew we'd be storming out of there in a huff any second.