Chapter 8
When I get home, the Sky is outside our unit. Along with a whole lot of other people.
There’s a big space around him, and not just because his guards have formed a protective circle. There’s another space around those guys, made by townspeople, giving the Land lots of room.
I also see that some of those townspeople have rifles.
The Sky must have only just arrived, because Pop is coming out of our unit to greet him.
“What are you doing here?” Pop asks the Sky, and I can hear the fear in his voice.
Not for himself, not even for us, but for the Sky.
The Sky never comes to the city. Never. He didn’t come for Wilf’s or Burly’s inaugurations, he doesn’t come on our holidays, and Pop says he didn’t come to welcome the new settlers way back when they first landed either.
He regards us as killers. Killers he has to tolerate. Killers he has to make peace with, because the only other option is killing all of us himself.
Pop’s Noise goes into that fast whir and mixes with the Sky’s Noise.
The townspeople’s faces take on a kind of horrified shock.
They’ve all heard about this, I’m sure; there are all kinds of rumors about my pop, some of them even true, but I don’t think any of them have ever seen this, not between a human and a Land anyway.
Not that they would use the word Land.
The Noise exchange stops. “Come inside,” my pop says immediately.
“What’s going on here?” Burly’s voice pipes up from outside the circle, somewhere behind me.
He probably knew about the Sky arriving before Pop did.
He probably thought the Sky was coming to see him.
Unlike everyone else, Burly steps into the space just outside the Land guards, but I don’t think even Burly would try to cross into where the Sky is standing without permission, so instead he comes around and stands next to Pop.
He gives Pop a look like, Howdy, neighbor. Pop does not give the same look back.
“It’s an honor to have you here, sir,” Burly says to the Sky.
The Sky says nothing back, not even in his Noise. I think he’s shocked at being addressed. Then he gives a long, pointed look to the townspeople who make a circle around his circle. He looks at their rifles.
“Let’s everyone show the proper respect to the Sky,” Burly says, raising his voice. “This is the leader of the entire planet, folks. The planet on which we are making a life for our own selves.”
Amazingly, every rifle is lowered–see what I mean when I don’t get all the hatred from my folks about Burly? He’s kind of a plonker, but he’s hardly the devil. So they lower their rifles, but the people stay, maybe less hostile than curious. Because this is, as I said, a hell of a curious thing.
“If we’d known you were coming,” Burly says to the Sky directly, “we’d have prepared an official welcome. A dinner. A public display of the peace and amity between our two peoples.”
The Land don’t have eyebrows. And even if they did, who’s to say they’d raise them like humans do? But let’s just say the look on the Sky’s face is like one big, giant raised eyebrow.
Burly seems to realize he’s made an error but maybe doesn’t know exactly what that error is. He tries to recover. “How can we help you?”
The Sky musters his Noise into our language. I will speak, he says, to the Knife.
This means Pop. Long story.
There’s a silence at this, as Burly tries to guess how embarrassing this is for him, to be dismissed so bluntly in front of so many people. “Ah, yes,” he finally says, with a smile, “I know you two are old friends.” He turns to Pop. “From the bad times.”
“And these are the good times, are they?” Pop says.
“Perhaps you don’t know our protocols,” Burly says, back to the Sky. “What seems like a personal visit to you, may seem like something else to us. As leader of the humans on this planet–”
“Not all of us,” Pop says.
“As leader of the humans,” Burly says a little louder, “I’d suggest that perhaps my presence at your meeting with Mr. Hewitt would be a good idea. Politically, don’t you know? For both of us.”
And he’s smiling. And he seems like he’s being friendly.
The Sky looks from Pop to Burly, back to Pop.
Then he looks Burly full in the eye, musters his Noise again, and says, No.
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