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His soldiers come down the gangway first, stomping down to surround me. Then he comes striding down the platform, his body clad in celestial silver robes. I’m almost impressed. The Patron doesn’t make journeys like this anymore. I must have truly angered him for him to make an appearance.
I look into my father’s face, see his gray eyes, his gray hair, his expression hard with disappointment and anger and I want to sink into the ground forever.
“Tselia! Put some clothes on!” He tuts and slips the robe off his shoulders to drape it around my muddy half-clad body. “Do you know what you have done?”
“Ruined everything?” That’s always the answer to that particular question from him.
“Well, besides that,” the Patron sighs. “You’ve discovered the last remnants of original humanity. And you’ve contaminated them. I asked one thing of you. I asked you to inform me if you found anything. But of course, you didn’t.”
“I was going to, but…”
“I don’t want to hear it, Tselia. The council will hear it at your trial.”
“Patron, please…”
His face is utterly impassive. “I don’t want to hear whatever inventive excuse you have for this grand disobedience. These people are to be studied from afar, not interfered with. You don’t belong here.”
“But they welcomed me.” It’s sort of true. “They want me to live with them.”
“Out of the question.”
“No, you’re not listening!” I exclaim. “I want to stay here. I want to live here.”
The Patron shakes his head. “That is a ridiculous proposition.”
“It’s not. They’re people, just like us.”
“They’re savages,” he corrects me. “Primitives. They have more in common with an amoeba than they do with you.”
“That’s not true…”
He’s not listening.
“You will go on trial, and this time I will not protect you, Tselia. This time you will pay for what you’ve done.”
I knew I would hear those words one day. I knew this would happen. It does not make it any less awful.
I look at Zion, frozen in time, held in thrall by the lights that flicker at a frequency designed to make the human brain shut down. He will not know me after tonight. It will be like I never existed at all. That is the only mercy in all of this. He will not suffer. I will pay for every bit of pleasure he gave me many times over, but he will remain here unaware that he ever had a star girl to love.
“Come, Tselia.”
The Patron expects me to follow him up into the ship. He doesn’t expect resistance, but I have learned from Zion, and I have learned from Tyna. I know that passive disobedience does not work. If one is to rebel, one must do it forcefully.
There is a soldier near me, holding a weapon. He doesn’t expect me to resist either. None of them do. Resistance is futile, after all. Nobody resists the Patron. Until now. A quick yank and the soldier is no longer holding the weapon. I am. In an instant, twenty-three other weapons are pointed at me. It doesn’t matter. I point the gun at the Patron. He’s the one they’re trying to protect.
“Tselia! What are you doing!” His dramatic gasp is almost funny.
“I’m staying here. Turn the lights off. Let their minds go.”
“Tselia…”
I don’t have the patience for this. I lift the weapon and I aim it at the bottom of the craft, where the light emitters are. A single shot knocks out the bulb and in an instant, the tribe is free.
They are not pleased to find the Patron and his soldiers in their wake. Shock gives way quickly to aggression, but they know what guns are and they are not so stupid as to throw themselves into weapon fire. Zion, ever the natural leader, steps forward as the others cautiously retreat.
“Zion, meet my father. The Patron. He’s here to take me away.”
“No.”
The word leaves Zion’s lips heavy and definite.
“Well, that’s what I said, but he didn’t agree.”
The Patron’s rage is growing. “Tselia! Put that gun down and come here instantly.”
“So you can turn me into an ice block? No, thank you.”
“Tselia! Obey me this instant!”
“She never obeys,” Zion says. “You must know that.”
I thought they would all run screaming when they found themselves suddenly invaded. Instead they are composed. Especially Zion. The man who barely spoke two words to me when we met is engaging the Patron in conversation. This won’t end well, but it is brave of him.
“Oh, I know that!” the Patron snorts. “She hasn’t done a thing she was told since she was… I don’t even know how old.”
“Frustrating,” Zion notes.
“Incredibly.” The Patron glowers at me, then turns his attention back to Zion. “And I suppose I have you to thank for finding her here like this?”
“Alive? Yes.”
Zion may be a simple savage, but he speaks the language of power, and that does not change across centuries or even millennia. I am impressed. The last thing I expected my savage lover to be was a diplomat.
