Chapter 9
Cassie
“What’s that?”
“It looks like this. The feathers are like your hair. Dark and pretty.”
“Okay! I’ll be Cassiewary.” She grinned up at the matron, who offered a small, rare smile.
Sore and sweaty from that morning’s training, Cassie limped into the clinic’s lavatory.
Compared to the luxurious pools and facilities of the Aviary, the single hot water cleansing stall paled in comparison.
Cassie knew she should be grateful. She was free.
No one could force her to play companion to wealthy clients anymore.
But when she scraped at her skin in the cleansing unit with more force than necessary, leaving behind dark red grooves from her nails, she couldn’t bring herself to feel grateful.
Was it really freedom without her voice?
At least in the Aviary, everything went as expected.
At least in the Aviary, she had people she could speak to.
At least in the Aviary, she didn’t feel so alone.
Cassie scrubbed a single tear away from her face.
She wasn’t going to cry. Crying didn’t stop the clients from harassing you or the Aviarist from punishing you.
It was what she had always told her flock, and she didn’t want to be a hypocrite now.
Her breaths came in jagged as she smacked the palm of her hand against the button for the cleansing unit.
Warm water and suds pooled around her feet.
She was going to get on with her day. As much as she hated to admit it, running drills had helped.
Her muscles were the right kind of sore, and now it was time for her to go struggle through her first official reading lesson.
There were new clothes in her size, but something about Eleri’s oversized castoffs made her feel less exposed.
The healer had never asked for them back, and Cassie wasn’t going to offer unless she did.
She pulled on a gray-green jumpsuit that washed out her olive-toned skin and then shifted the sleeves down to cover the dark marks where she’d been scratching herself.
This was the first step. She resolved to learn as much as she could as quickly as she could.
When emerged from the lavatory into the clinic’s main atrium, S’samph and Eleri were both there speaking quietly.
S’samph glanced up first when she tried to creep by without disturbing them.
He was still dressed in the same drab fatigues he’d been wearing from that morning.
Eleri looked up after him, following his gaze, and then smiled at Cassie when she noticed her passing by.
“Do you need anything?” Eleri asked with kindness that churned Cassie’s insides.
She responded with a negative shake of her head, but she could feel S’samph’s eyes on her as she exited.
The heat of the day had risen with the suns, and Cassie knew she should be wearing sun protection even for the short walk from the clinic to the schoolhouse, but she couldn’t particularly bring herself to care.
She knew the residents of Laurus stared at her when she was out and about.
It wouldn’t surprise her if S’samph or Eleri told them to leave her alone, but the pitying glances just reinforced the deep emptiness coiled tightly inside of her.
Cassie pulled a hydropod from her bag and popped it in her mouth as she walked faster down the dusty road leading her out of the sun and out of everyone’s eyes.
A levibike was parked in front of the building, probably ?rim’s.
She trained her expression. No sadness today.
She was Cheerful Cassie, here to learn her reading.
Her boots kicked up dust as she marched up the steps of the schoolhouse and made sure she was ready to face the awkward educator.
Even if he did only seem to care about her for her voicelock.
He was waiting for her with a datapad in hand when she entered the schoolhouse. “Oh, hello there, Cassie. Are you well? I hope this timing isn’t an inconvenience for you.”
She shook her head and looked for somewhere to sit. All the seats were adhered to the floor, leaving the only free chair at the ?rim’s workspace.
“Here, you can sit here. I need to stand to use the holoscreen anyway.” ?rim stood and offered her his seat, which she took with a controlled smile.
“I’m so grateful!” she said.
“Okay, let’s start with the very basics then. Are you familiar with the concept of the phonetic alphabet?"
The word alphabet was familiar. She knew how to make letters with fingerspelling, but she had no understanding of the word ‘phonetic’, so she shook her head.
"Excellent, let’s start there then.” He pulled up a graphic on the screen with a chart. Each box was filled with a different symbol. “In Universal, all sounds you can make with your mouth are represented by a symbol.”
Her brows lifted as she waited for him to realize his mistake, but he continued onward, unaware. She sat up straighter as he ran through each of the sounds and boxes. It was simple enough in theory. It would just be an exercise in memorization.
“Do you want to try tracing the symbols? It’s a bit old school, but I find it helps cement the memory better than holowriting.” ?rim asked as he offered her a stylus and a basic datapad. Cassie accepted and found it had been preloaded with outlines of the shapes.
She mouthed the sounds she remembered as she traced over each of the thirty-seven symbols. ?rim watched with a critical eye as her wobbly lines covered the letters.
“You have a good memory,” he commented. Cassie nodded.
She had to. It was important to remember information about each of their clients to ensure the best possible customer experience.
If she’d been allowed to, she could have recited each of her 93 regular clients’ favorite drinks, the names of their offspring or mates, their home planets, and most of their identifying information.
There was a reason she was popularly requested for her companionship.
Clients valued the way she made them feel like a companion and not a client.
In comparison, thirty-seven symbols were unremarkable.
When she had finished her tracing, she handed the datapad back to ?rim with a question in her eyes. Her hands instinctively formed the sign for ‘more’, even though she knew he wouldn’t understand.
But he noticed, even if he didn’t understand. “Does that mean something?” he asked, as he attempted to replicate the motion. Cassie nodded and made the hand sign for her name, which was a combination of the signs for ‘dangerous’ and ‘bird’.
Then she said, “My full designation is Cassowary, but you can call me Cassie,” followed by a repeat of the sign for her name.
?rim repeated the sign with his hands. “That’s your name? Cassowary? Cassie?”
This produced a real smile as she signed her name a third time. ?rim returned her smile with an excited tap of his elbow nodes and then repeated her sign.
“Cassie. Should we practice writing your name?” he asked. Cassie nodded and accepted the datapad again. ?rim held the stylus first and wrote a sequence of symbols. “There. That’s your name in Universal. Cassie.”
She accepted the stylus back and copied the symbols in her own shaky hand. Her name. Written out, it felt like hers for the first time in her life.
“So, is there anything you can tell me about yourself or your interests? It might help me find better reading material for you.”
This made her stomach twist. What could she tell him besides the programmed phrase about her imaginary interests?
The Aviarist had given each passera a set of fabricated hobbies to humanize them for the clientele.
But she had to say something. “Thank you for asking! My hobbies are calligraphy and laser volleys.”
“Calligraphy and laser volleys?” he echoed. “Oh.” The realization must have struck him because he made a motion with his finger nodes. “Those aren’t real, are they? You don’t know how to write. Calligraphy requires advanced penmanship.”
Cassie shook her head. Nothing about the words she was able to speak was real.
“My supervisor manages all interactions. Please wait while I contact them.” She crossed her arms over her chest, using the familiar words as armor against her churning emotions.
The Aviarist kept them happy and careless.
Pretty birds in his collection. Cared for and used at his will.
If the IA hadn’t come to free them, Cassie would have spent her entire life not knowing she could have an existence beyond the walls of the Aviary.
?rim’s demeanor shifted as he tapped pensively at the node at the center of his chest. “Someone really wanted to keep you silent. I wonder why. Sorry, that’s probably a rude thing to speculate about.”
“Can I help you with something else?” Cassie bared her neck to give him a better view of the voicelock.
There was no point in continuing this conversation, so a distraction might redirect his attention.
It was a cheap trick, maybe, but she didn’t want to discuss anything else with him unless it was about learning her letters or trying to answer any of his technical questions about her voicelock.
Besides, she wanted to ensure he would give her another reading lesson, so she expected payment was due on her part.
It finally seemed to register with him what she was offering. “Are you sure? I won’t deny I’m curious.”
“My role is to help you have a positive experience.”
Letting people touch her was of little consequence. Someone examining her voicelock wouldn’t harm her. However, her words seemed to make him pause, judging from the way he pressed hard against the node on the center of his chest for a long moment.
“I’ll look then.”
Cassie sat back. He was helping her, so she had to make sure the exchange was balanced. She didn’t have anything else to offer him. But she needed the reading lessons, so whatever it took to keep them going, she would do.
“I do just want to clarify that I would still teach you to read regardless of whether you let me look at your voicelock.”
“I’m sorry, I think I missed that,” Cassie said, desperate to find a way to communicate to him how much she needed these lessons. ?rim rubbed a thumb over the node on his left palm.
“It’s true, I am interested in looking at your voicelock, but it’s not payment. Only if you want to share, and only because I think I might be able to help.”
Cassie’s stare grew blank. She didn’t know what to do with this.
He was offering her a real choice. He would keep giving her reading lessons even if she said no.
She didn’t mind if he looked at her voicelock, but she found herself frozen by all the options.
It had never been up to her whether someone did something to her or not.
Some of the tension eased out of her shoulders as she lifted her chin again, offering permission. He could look.
“If you want me to stop, just tap on the worktable.” His hands were soft on her neck as he ran a fingertip over the device embedded just below her jawline. Cassie shivered under the unexpectedly gentle touch.
“It’s really impressive craftsmanship.” He tapped softly against the device, and the metal resonated against his crystalline fingers.
“I know that’s not helpful to you though.
” ?rim dropped his hands from her throat.
“If you would let me, I would like to investigate the mechanism here.” He paused.
“I think I might be able to remove it or at least disable it.” ?rim stood then.
“We might have to coordinate with a surgeon. Someone discreet. Maybe a higher-tier research hospital.” He started to pace.
“Getting ahead of myself. Disable first. Remove second.” With a bright ping of his elbow nodes connecting, ?rim turned back to her. “So, what do you say?”
He'd rattled off so many different things, Cassie wasn’t sure what she should be responding to.
The Aviarist had always told them removing the voicelock would trigger a death sequence.
Even tampering could be fatal. But what did she have to lose?
Cassie placed her hands flat on her thighs. She was willing to let him try.
“It would be my pleasure!” she finally said.
“Right! Excellent. Excellent.” He clasped his hands around hers, catching her by surprise.
There was something kind of sweet about his awkward social fumbling.
“You won’t regret it. We’ll find a solution for this.
I’m counting on it. And we’ll continue with your reading lessons.
I have so many preparations to make. Do you mind if we restart in three days instead of tomorrow? ”
She nodded. It was hard to share his optimism. But as long as the reading lessons continued, she was satisfied.
“Do you want to borrow the datapad for practice in the meantime?” He offered her the device, and it took all of her manners not to snatch it away from him.
“I’m so grateful!” she exclaimed, and for once she actually meant it.
“It’s one of the school’s datapads, so I’m pretty sure it’s mostly waveblocked, but it should be totally fine for writing practice. Here, let me show you how to run the program.”
Cassie watched rapt, making sure she didn’t miss a single detail as he showed her how to load up the letter templates and then reset the practice holo.
Once he’d finished, she showed him another hand sign.
The one for “thank you”. It was a small gesture, but it made her feel a little bit less alone knowing someone else knew a few words in her language.