Chapter 7
Cassie
“Show them what you were hiding, Robin.” The Aviarist dragged Cassie’s half-kyrot flockmate in front of the assembled passeri.
Robin was bruised. The skin of his lips burst and bleeding like a ripe plum.
With trembling hands, he unfolded himself from his curl around a stack of paper readers. Cassie didn’t know what they were for.
“Tell them what you were doing, Robin.” The Aviarist kicked him in the knee until he cried out.
“That’s right. You can’t. Your voices are silenced for your own safety.
” The Aviarist lifted the stack of readers and started to rip.
Pages fluttered. One landed in front of Cassie, but she kept her eyes averted.
“How can we keep you safe if you can communicate freely with our clients? Your silence is your safety. Never forget that.” He turned to Kestrel. “Keep your flock in line, Kestrel.”
Kestrel got to her knees, bowing her head low in way of apology. The Aviarist dragged Robin away by one of his wingtips.
It took all Cassie’s willpower to enter the classroom again.
She knew it was important. She knew she needed to learn reading.
Without it, she would never have a real voice again.
So, she stepped into the schoolhouse, ignoring the stares of the younglings.
But the educator was staring at her too. And his eyes were locked on her throat.
Cassie pulled up the neckline of the ill-fitting jumpsuit she’d borrowed from Eleri, but it did little to hide the silver chip just below her jaw. All the confidence she’d mustered evaporated as she slid into the backmost seat.
“Good morning, class,” the educator said as he loaded up the holoscreen in the front of the room. One of the kyrot pups flicked a tiny stone at the giradey fledglings and then turned to pretend like nothing had happened. This caused a riot of squawking from the front right corner of the room.
“Good morning, Educator ?rim,” one of the urtazi spawn harrumphed, ignoring the hubbub on the far side of the room. Cassie could have intervened. She’d seen the entirety of what had happened, but last time it had only cost her dearly.
“Alright then, I’m not sure what’s happening here,” he gestured to the bickering giradey, “but class is starting, and I need your full attention. Our work here is important. What you learn in your schooling will put you on a path for whatever you decide to do in the future.”
“I’m taking over my parents’ farm. What am I gonna do with numbers?” A grumble came from one of the front desks as one of the kyrot pups opened and snapped shut his wings in annoyance.
While the educator tried to come up with an appropriate response for the defiant pup, Cassie placed her palms flat on the smooth surface of her holodesk.
It was difficult to resist the urge to interfere, but these younglings weren’t her responsibility.
Finally, the class settled, and the educator was able to start his lesson.
“Today, we’ll pick up where we left off in our last class. Let me see… based on the curriculum, we’ll be working on basic calculations, and then move into some simple literary analysis. Then you’ll have your mealtime break, and we’ll resume with Alliance history in the afternoon.”
He rattled off the subjects as if they were things everyone should already know.
No one had ever bothered to tell Cassie she was entitled to live on an Alliance planet, let alone about its history, but none of that was going to help her learn to communicate better.
No. She wanted the reading lessons, which meant she was going to have to figure out how to ask, even though the thought filled her with creeping dread.
She waited until the class ended for lunch. The literature analysis meant nothing to her. While the students squabbled over a passage of text, all she saw were colorful symbols on the embedded holoscreen on her work surface.
As the younglings ran out of the room, with their lunch pails slung over shoulders and their voices raised in excitement, Cassie lingered behind.
The educator was still at the front of the room, watching her with expectation in his gaze.
She didn’t quite know what to make of him.
He wasn’t a species she had experience with.
She could tell you what motivated a kyrot, an urtazi, or a human, but teosians were a mystery.
Even still, he obviously wanted something from her; Cassie had been around enough males to recognize a keen hunger hidden in plain sight.
Although she’d never been forced to offer her body for sexual pleasure, unlike some of the other females in the aviary, she’d been propositioned before.
The IA had promised her anyone who asked this of her or any of the passeri in their settlements would be punished harshly, but she wasn’t sure his desires were physical.
Besides, she needed him for something as well.
Perhaps they could come to an agreement.
Cassie approached first, trying to decide how she would frame her request in the best way to be understood.
The educator, ?rim, he’d said his name was, seemed off balance by her direct approach.
This was her intention. Males liked to think they were in charge, so to get the upper hand, they needed to be unsettled just enough to lower their guard.
She wasn’t in the Aviary anymore, but she didn’t know how else to do this.
She didn’t know how else to get what she needed from this unfamiliar person.
“I was actually just going to come speak to you. You’re much older than the other students, so I was hoping I could learn a bit more about you.”
“Thank you for asking! I’m a mature adult for my species.” For her, this was actually true, as she was already twenty-four, but it didn’t stop the Aviarist from programming the same response for all of the passeri regardless of whether they were over the age of 20 or not.
“You said your name was Cassie, right? So, do you mind if we talk a bit longer?”
Cassie offered him a practiced, patient smile as she waited for him to finish speaking.
“Right, so I actually had a question for you. You seemed a bit lost during our lesson. Do you have any formal schooling or training?”
She shook her head. “That service is not available.”
“Does that mean you don’t have any formal training or schooling?”
Cassie nodded to emphasize her agreement.
Maybe his line of questioning would actually help them get to the same place organically without her having to do something unnatural.
She tapped on the holoscreen next to him, and he almost fell off balance, startled by her sudden closeness.
When she managed to produce a haze of the unfamiliar symbols on the screen, she tapped at them.
“You want to understand the color settings of the holoscreen? Do you suffer from color blindness? Teosians can’t see color in bright light, but I didn’t think this was a human feature as well.
” He rubbed at a node on his index finger.
Cassie shook her head with a plastered-on smile as she practiced a level of patience she didn’t feel.
This was just like talking to an iridescence-addled client.
Patience and calm. She’d get what she wanted eventually.
Even the most intense client could be talked down with the right approach.
Cassie picked a specific symbol, circled it with her finger, and then made a questioning gesture.
She switched to rubbing a thumb over the first joint on her index finger, approximating teosian confusion.
To really enhance the effect, she widened her eyes, making them as large and confused as possible.
She later realized this was a human gesture, and she wasn’t trying to communicate with a human.
When he didn’t respond with immediate clarity, she tried to reinforce her confusion with the fourth symbol over.
“Wait. You don’t know how to read.” He clapped his wrist nodes together with excitement. “You don’t know how to read!” He paused then. “Apologies, I’m just excited I finally understand what you’re trying to tell me.”
Cassie resisted the very human urge to snort.
After all, she barely counted as a person.
A passera wasn’t a person. A passera transcends personhood.
This was what the Aviarist always said. But she would humor the educator, so she shook her head sadly as she made a gesture in his direction with the same indicator of questioning.
"You want me to teach you?"
“I’m so grateful!” Cassie nodded. Finally, he got it.
Quicker than she’d expected, but so much more awkward.
The double nodes on his palms met in quick succession with enthusiasm.
At least he seemed eager to help. She wasn’t sure what she would have done if he said no.
The tension in her forehead eased as she took a step away from the board.
“When would you like to start? You don’t have to call me educator.
Call me ?rim. Can you call me ?rim?” he was rambling, but Cassie offered him a generous smile.
Names she could only do as programmed. Her voicelock was always modified before meeting a new client.
?rim’s name was not, however, part of her codex.
“This service is not available.” Coming from her voicelock, it sounded genuinely apologetic.
“So, no names then. Fascinating.” The teosian watched the blinking chip on her throat instead of her face, and Cassie was certain she knew exactly what he wanted.
Well, she wasn’t about to stop him. If he wanted to study her voicelock, she would let him.
He wouldn’t learn anything that the IA scientists hadn’t been able to figure out, but if it got him to teach her how to read, it seemed like a fair trade.