6 African Princess
A parade of cockroaches crawled down Tompa’s back.
No, that was impossible. It must be sweat. She tried to scratch the tickle against the cushions of the mummy case. No relief. She moved her hips forward, trying listlessly to push the bar that opened the door. Still locked. That wasn’t supposed to be possible, for safety reasons, and she vaguely wondered how they’d locked it. The light-ship had landed on Zee-Shode half a flickin’ hour ago and she was still in this mummy case that was stuffy and ripe with her own sweat.
Not that it really mattered. Nothing mattered.
A shadow eclipsed the light from the tiny window set too high in the mummy-case door for her to see through. The door opened, washing her in cool, fresh air. A blond Navy Policeman unstrapped Tompa. “How’s your head?” the NP asked as he handcuffed her.
She said nothing, just stared at the jail-bar insignia on his shoulder.
When he led her outside onto the roof of a Shon office building, it took several seconds for her eyes to adjust to the sunlight. Then they had to adjust all over again when she was led down a dark circular stairway of tiny steps to a suite outfitted with human furniture.
A doctor shined a dazzling light into her eye. “Does your head hurt?” he asked.
Sullenly, she stared straight ahead.
“You should be over it soon, if you aren’t already,” the doctor said. “Heal-sleep leaves a hell of a hangover when you aren’t brought out of it gradually.”
So that was the problem yesterday—the maggoty gordos were so eager to crucify her that they rushed her out of heal-sleep.
“Not very friendly, are you?” The doctor pointed the light into her other eye, then poked the small patch of stubble high on her forehead where the hair had been shaved. It hurt, but she didn’t give him the satisfaction of wincing. “You’ve made a remarkable recovery, young lady. You’re very lucky.”
Yeah. Lucky.
After the medical exam, the two NPs led her down a narrow, ramp-like escalator to the dimly lit lobby of the office building. A dozen or so humans awaited them. They studiously ignored her, except for a woman who leaned close. “Does your head still hurt, Ship’s Ward?”
Tompa didn’t answer. She hadn’t said a word since yesterday and if she never spoke again, it wouldn’t matter.
After a few minutes of hushed conversation, the group headed onto the street. No one had told her where on Zee-Shode they were; this might be Oah-Shode, the city where she had taken her ill-fated shore leave, or it might be on the other side of the planet. The street was wide and the roadway that roofed the pedestrian level was four stories up. Windows with tiny, diamond-shaped panes lined the ground floors of the buildings, while giant television-type screens loomed over them, giving the street a busy, almost frenzied feeling. Shons jammed the street, hurrying for incomprehensible reasons. Tompa didn’t even try to make sense of the bewildering, soundless televisions, the bleating murmur of alien conversation, the chaotic scurrying of Shons, or the oppressive strangeness of the odors that assaulted her. What difference did any of it make?
The Navy had betrayed her.
Surrounded by half a dozen humans, Tompa’s two burly Navy escorts propelled her into the street. The Shons stopped all at once, then gave the humans a wide berth. The air seemed to change, filling with . . . something. It wasn’t a smell or a sound, but it was there nonetheless; a sudden, almost palpable sense of shared malice aimed squarely at her. Every last one of the Shons stared at her, murmuring, then shouting. What had been a crowd of individuals was, suddenly, a single entity. A herd. The hair on the back of Tompa’s neck rose and the other humans glanced nervously around as they walked through the crowd.
A Shon spat at her, whistling. The spittle fell short of its mark. A second later, another Shon spat, then another and another in a rhythm as precise as the spitting of a machine gun. They pinched their supple mouths into a funnel shape, leaned their heads back and jumped as they spat, like kids taking jump shots on one of the glass-strewn basketball courts back home. And they all whistled as they spat.
The humans drew closer together to avoid the bombardment. A woman pointed up and to the left. “Look.”
A television screen showed Tompa walking down the street in handcuffs. The picture zoomed in so her eyes and nose filled the screen grotesquely. The crowd grew denser, closer, and the spittle, which had been falling short, started hitting the NPs on either side of her. They edged away from the Shons, closer to Tompa. Half of the screens now carried the live coverage of her progress.
Thick, mucousy spittle hit her cheek. The guard on her left, the one who’d asked if her head hurt, leaned over and wiped it away. She ignored him, walking like a zombie.
More spittle hit her, and the NP didn’t wipe it away—too busy shielding his own face from the unrelenting onslaught. After a minute, he moved an arm’s length away, allowing the Shons a clearer shot at her and sparing himself. The other guard did the same.
Malice became so thick in the air that it left Tompa panting in fear. A soft, squishy fruit or vegetable hit her in the forehead, a red gob catching on her eyelash to obscure her vision. Hot liquid splashed her arm, soaking her sleeve. Every single screen now featured her face, dappled with slimy food and greenish spit that ran down her cheeks like tears.
She glanced to her left and spotted a Shon cameraman scampering close to the humans. She looked into the dead glass eye of the camera, trying not to cringe, not to cry, not to give these devilish creatures the slightest satisfaction. Each step required a massive act of will and pride. She seemed to plod that terrible gauntlet forever, until every inch of her face was covered in drippy, pungent slime.
And then suddenly the shouting and whistling noise were gone. She took a couple more steps before she realized she could stop, so intent was she on simply placing one foot in front of the other.
They were in a high-ceilinged lobby with orange and white checkerboard tiles covering not just the floors, but also the walls and ceiling. The effect was disorienting, like entering a universe with no up, no down, no right or wrong. Orange-and-white corridors led away from the lobby. All the tile-lines pointed toward a pair of huge wooden doors at the far end of the lobby, making them seem ominously inevitable.
A shrill screech made her jump; a pair of Shons were opening a squeaky, tiled door. Most of her human escorts walked through the doorway without a backward glance. Left alone with Tompa, the two NPs cleaned themselves with handkerchiefs as best they could. Tompa allowed herself a deep breath and, after a moment, tried to relax muscles that were as stiff and unyielding as the handcuffs that chafed her wrists.
Noise exploded from a door behind her. Shons!
Tompa jerked around to face the shouts and threats. Thrown off-balance by the handcuffs, she stumbled and landed in a sprawl, her cheekbone exploding in pain as it smashed the floor. She lay there, stunned, in puddles of mucous and urine leaking hot and humiliatingly from her body. The orange tiles had a subtle floral pattern she hadn’t noticed before. It might be the last thing she’d ever see, if the Shons had burst into the building intent on a lynching.
The noise stopped as quickly as it had started. An outside door had opened. That was all.
“Get her off the floor.”
It was a male voice, familiar. Roussel. The flickin’ roach who’d pushed her into the goddamned arms of the maggoty Shons.
The NPs took her arms. She fought them, flailing and kicking, but they lifted her like an empty garbage can and dumped her on her feet. Blood from her cheek fell onto the middle of a white tile. Another drop fell, but she was swaying so much that it landed on an orange tile. She glared at Roussel’s freshly shined boots and those of the six people with him.
“Dear God,” Roussel whispered.
Something warm and salty dribbled onto her lips. Blood, she hoped.
“Damned Shons.” That was Ambassador Schneider; Tompa would remember the voices of her two betrayers until her last bre
ath. “Come along, Dante. Chief Justice Par-Hahso is expecting us, and I’ll certainly lodge a protest with him.”
“Wait.” He turned to a statuesque woman wearing jail-bar insignia. “Beyongo, see that Ship’s Ward Lee gets cleaned up before the trial.”
“Yes, sir,” the woman answered.
Roussel stepped closer to Tompa. He got out his handkerchief; red initials in old-fashioned embroidery marked one corner. She shied away as he dabbed filth from her face.
“How’s your head?”
Tompa’s mind went salsa. She screamed and jerked her knee toward her tormenter’s balls. He grunted as her knee struck his thigh.
What a time to miss.
The NPs yanked her away from their boss. “That’s enough,” Roussel told them. They kept their hands on her arms, just in case.
Then Roussel did something unexpected. He saluted her.
The salute didn’t fool her. He was just trying, from a safer distance this time, to assuage his conscience with an easy gesture. Well, she’d see him blue in the face with her handcuffs clamped around his neck before she let his guilt die.
She spat at him—the way the Shons did, like a jump shot.
The guards got her good for that, jerking her out of midair. Her shoulder burned as though nearly pulled from its socket. Ambassador Schneider shook her head, clearly appalled by Tompa’s ingratitude. The woman was as responsible for Tompa’s plight as Roussel, but at least she wasn’t hypocritical about it.
Schneider led Roussel and the rest toward the door where the first group had disappeared. As it closed, the door squeaked and the shrill sound echoed hideously, as though the building were laughing at her. Through the narrowing crack of the doorway, Roussel stared. She met his gaze, but couldn’t summon another outburst of defiance. There was nothing left inside her.
Through the closing doorway, Dante saw Tompa Lee looking at him. Their eyes locked. When the door closed with a sepulchral thud, he squeezed his eyes shut.
He opened them when a hand touched his shoulder and stayed there. Carolyn, of course. Ever since the other night, she acted as though she owned him.
That night confused him. Sometimes, he thought he’d been raped. Other times, those thoughts felt silly because he’d gotten such intense pleasure. The wine hadn’t robbed him of free will or responsibility for his own actions; after all, he’d resisted speeding up Tompa’s medical treatment until ordered to do so. The fact remained that he’d succumbed to Carolyn’s body. He wanted a second chance to resist, damn it.
Either that, or his indignant determination was really an urge for wine-enhanced sex again. Equally possible.
One memory towered over his confusion, however: sitting on that same couch yesterday while breaking the news to Tompa with bile rising in his throat.
“Come along, Dante,” she said.
He hated the possessive, dismissive way Carolyn treated him now. He took a step, then came to a stubborn halt. “What next, Carolyn?”
She stopped and waved the rest of the group on. She turned to Dante. “We exchange greetings with Chief Justice Par-Hah-So and learn the protocol we should follow. Then we proceed to the Bowels of Bez-Tattin where the trial will start. Come along.”
Dante stayed put. With the memory of Tompa’s spattered coveralls burned in his mind, he suddenly realized that Carolyn had been evading his questions about Shon trials. “Exactly what sort of justice will she get? Have our lawyers prepared well enough for an alien legal system in such a short time?”
“No.” Carolyn met his gaze with slick, glacial calmness.
Dante leaned his head to one side as though that might help him hear better. “What?”
She sighed impatiently. “Remember what I told Ship’s Ward Lee about Bez-Tattin and Shon justice? That’s all I’ve been able to learn.”
“Okay.” He pursed his lips, then shook his head. “No, it’s not okay. I don’t understand.”
“Whenever we ask about their legal system, the Shons spout on about Bez-Tattin. This sort of thing happens sometimes when you deal with aliens, Dante; they tell you what’s important to them without even realizing they’re making assumptions you can’t fathom. Anyway, we have no idea of Shon legal procedures. They could cut open their equivalent of a chicken and read its entrails, for all I know.” She tugged at his arm. “Now come along, Dante.”
A sense of heaviness settled over him like a shroud, as though he’d done something so cruel and evil that it crushed his will to move. He ran a hand over his face, certain that guilt was stamped there for all to read.
“Come, Dante. Tonight, I promise I’ll make you feel better.”
When she took his hand, he followed. Again, he wiped at his forehead. He’d joined the Navy hoping to be worthy of the heroes of popular myth. He’d never felt farther from his dream.
The only humans left with Tompa were the two NPs and a tall black woman in the white dress uniform of a junior manager of Military Discipline. Her nameplate read ‘K. Beyongo.’
Beyongo studied Tompa’s filthy, torn khakis, muttering in a language Tompa didn’t understand. “Watch the prisoner,” she ordered the guards in a lilting accent that might have been African, “while I find a place to wash this thing.”
She returned in a few minutes, followed by a uniformed Shon who struggled to keep up with her. The Shon led them down a maze of tiled hallways, pointed to a door at the end of a side hall, then scurried off.
“Wait here,” Beyongo told the guards.
The two men glanced uneasily at each other. “Sorry ma’m, but our orders are to stay with the prisoner at all times.”
“I meant all three of you.”
When Beyongo opened the door, Tompa saw a Shon bathroom similar to the one she’d used on shore leave, with a toilet trough on the left, a shower area on the right, and a curtained cubicle at the far end. Beyongo went inside and closed the door.
A few minutes later, she emerged wearing nothing but underpants and the cubicle curtain draped around her shoulders. It fell only to her hips and barely wrapped around her, yet she didn’t tug at it self-consciously. Her whole demeanor had changed, from that of an annoyed junior officer to an African princess wearing a royal cape. Here I am, her posture shouted. I don’t give a damn how you deal with it.
“My uniform is inside,” Beyongo said regally. “Put it on after you shower.” She held up a hand to stop the NPs from following. “Stay outside.”
“Our orders from AVP Roussel—”
“You’re new on the Vance,” Beyongo interrupted, “so let me tell you how we do things here. We interpret Dante’s orders intelligently rather than follow them blindly. Dante told me to clean up the prisoner, so I give her the uniform off my back. That’s the spirit of his orders.”
“But we’re supposed to stay with her at all times.”
“And risk a harassment complaint? Look, we do what’s necessary to make Dante look good. Understand?” Beyongo turned to Tompa. “What are you waiting for?”
When Tompa held up her wrists, the woman unlocked the cuffs.
“Now move it!”
Inside the shower area, Tompa stripped, tossed her sodden clothes into a pile, and yanked the tiny, silken ring that she guessed would start the shower. Nothing happened. Instead of a nozzle, there were perforations in the ceiling. She was looking up at the perforations when suddenly water fell into her eyes and stung the cut on her cheekbone.
It felt like warm spring rain. She tried to shut out all that had happened and concentrate on the twin luxuries of water on skin and being able to move her arms freely. Closing her eyes, she ran her fingers through her hair, rinsing away the filth. After months of ship’s water, the shower’s aroma was strange but beautiful, the way rain on a flower garden might smell. If only she could soak here forever.
“That’s enough.” Beyongo reached in to pull the silken ring. The spring shower ceased. She tossed Tompa a Shon towel that was ridiculously inadequate; after she dried her face and hair, it was s
opping, useless, and bloody.
Taking a finger-sized first-aid kit from a pocket of the blouse, Beyongo painted an anesthetic bandage across Tompa’s cheekbone. Then Tompa pulled Beyongo’s dress whites over her wet body. Fumbling with the blouse’s metal fasteners, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrors walling the cubicle at the end of the washroom. She froze.
She looked ridiculous. Her hair straggled in all directions. The skirt was a pleated tube with catches on each side to cinch the waist to any size, but Tompa was so much smaller than Beyongo that the sides bulged hideously. The blouse was so huge as to be laughable. She’d always dreamed of wearing Navy dress whites, but not like this.
Tears burned in her eyes. Yet if she started crying, she knew she might never stop.
“Move it, Lee!”
She turned. The officer looked just as ridiculous, if not more so, yet she stood proudly.
Tompa took a deep breath and summoned her pride. Not having much pride left, she had to fake it, pretending she was a majestic African Princess surrounded by ill-bred cockroaches. It took a few heartbeats, but she managed to hold her head high, push her shoulders back, and gaze at Beyongo through narrowed eyes.
The woman blinked.
Tompa spoke for the first time that entire day. “Thank you.”
Beyongo imprisoned Tompa’s wrists in the handcuffs with a fierce click. “I gave up my uniform for Dante Roussel, not for you. Don’t you dare disgrace it.”
“Not for the uniform. For . . .” Tompa groped for words. “For your example. Your pride.”
Startled, Beyongo looked at Tompa, really looked, for the first time. After a moment, her dark face softened. “Yeah.” She heaved a sigh. “Yeah.”
During a long, heartfelt stare, the only sound was one last drop of water plunging to the shower floor with the doomed stealth of a mouse who had hoped to remain unnoticed. Then Beyongo straightened, regal once more. “Let’s go. You have an appointment.”
The rest of the humans, including Ambassador Schneider and Roussel, were waiting in a double line in the vestibule. So were several Shons, looking somber and important. All eyes turned to Tompa.
African princess. Remember.
An ancient Shon in an orange-and-white checkered robe pointed with all the fingers of both hands at the tall wooden doors, as though casting a spell. Two Shons hurried to the doors and opened them, revealing an impenetrable darkness. The vestibule seemed suddenly cold.
“Her hair looks terrible,” Schneider said to one of Tompa’s guards. She pulled a comb from a pocket and tossed it to him. “Tell her to fix it.”
Tompa took the comb from the NP, her resolve suddenly quivering. She glanced behind her, where Beyongo lingered in a corridor, then clenched the comb in her fist so tightly that its teeth dug into her palm.
“AVP Roussel and I will lead the way,” Schneider continued. “The rest of you will follow, with the NPs bringing Ship’s Ward Lee at the end of the line.”
To hell with their flickin’ protocol. Without waiting for anyone—not Schneider, not Roussel, not even her guards—Tompa straightened her shoulders and strode toward her dark fate.