Here's another short excerpt from Master of Nothing, Part I
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They had been standing there for hours, the boy slowly drawing closer to Ashland in an attempt not to get sold off alone. He looked hungry and just as cold as her. Lan gave them a sort of soggy flat bread and a rounded block of something that seemed to consist solely of herbs, and they ate quietly between moments when various aliens inspected them. It was fascinating to see the different creatures and their garbled languages. Oddly enough, for no reason whatsoever, those who interacted with Lan and haggled spoke in English or an equally Earthen language. Ashland tried to reason this out in her mind but didn’t manage it. But at the very least the concentration on the people around her and their strange cultures kept her mind off the ground a hundred feet or more below, off the fact she was soon to become a laborer for one of them completely against her will. And as much as she wanted to run after hours of being mulled over by potential buyers, she knew there was no place to go.
Eventually a slow, steady creature made its way toward her. It was most humanoid of all the creatures she had seen, with very pale, almost purely white skin covering its lean body. It wore the barest minimum of clothing. But all of this information was dimmed by a fact that made Ash’s heart leap in recognition and hope. The nearly-human creature had no eyes.
He nodded to her, and she smiled despite her weariness. “How much?” he asked politely. His voice rumbled throatily, without being guttural. There was a musical cadence to it that set Ashland’s mind immediately at ease. “For the woman.”
“Hundred ten.” Lan had hiked the price up Ashland notice but the Hume did not seem to notice or mind. He calmly took out the appropriate amount from his pocket.
The human boy beside her started crying unexpectedly, gripping Ashland’s hand. “Please, please buy me too… Please, have mercy…”
Not all alien species understood or took stock in mercy, but as it was the male Hume hesitated, cocking his ear as if listening, and then nodded. He paid for the boy, too, and then gestured. “Follow.”
The boy sniffled and skipped hurriedly ahead, eager to please his new master. Ashland, too, stayed close to him, nervous of all the others who might have had an eye on her. They walked across the sky back to the platform and into the skyscraper, then down the endless amount of rough rubble that stood in for steps. Through a tunnel, and onto the landing strip, at the side of which a small ship, hardly large enough to break atmosphere, waited for them. Not one of three of them spoke, silent and each taking the moments as they came to them. Inside the ship was small but not cramped, and clean. It was a relief after the past weeks. The planet was at best mildly polluted, not to mention the cells for the slaves they had stayed in. Even (SHIPNAME), while never dirty, had not been clean. It had been cold and sterile. But the Hume’s ship smelled like clean mountain air and nothing else. Not even the whirring of the machinery seemed to cause a change in the air.
“Come, strap in.” He stretched a long finger on a long white arm to two seats just behind the command chair. Odd that there were exactly two of them. Ashland sat and the boy followed her lead as they buckled their seatbelts for takeoff. The ship already humming, the Hume turned it down the takeoff strip. He waited a long moment, sitting in his chair. Had he eyes Ash would have thought he was staring. Eventually, with no warning, he fired up the extra engine and they were zooming off the strip up, rocketing with the now-familiar feeling of movement sickness rattling her stomach through the layers of atmosphere and into the evening sky, bright with the light of the turning suns and increasingly darker as they went. Only when things evened out, the ship stopped shaking so violently and the Hume took off his own seat belt, did Ashland do the same. The boy quickly unstrapped himself and went in the back, rushing to find a toilet to be sick in.
There was a moment of silence between them, a slow, easy smile on the Hume’s face. Ashland broke the silence. “You are Hume?”
He nodded slowly. “I am sorry I could not come sooner. Your comrades are well away by now.”
Her parched lips parted a little. “How did you know where we were? We were not scheduled to arrive for another fortnight.”
Again he nodded. “I knew.” Which didn’t answer her question at all. She remembered several chatter conversations she’s listened to in her spare moments, and those few had not made much sense at all. It seemed there was something the pair of Hume plugged into her ear knew, something fundamentally different in the way they thought about things that she simply couldn’t understand. They would have gaps in logic and continue on as though nothing had happened, or randomly change topics for no apparent reason.
Finally, she responded, dropping that subject as long as it was going to be fruitless. “Thank you much for your help,” she said in his language. She’d been practicing. “I am Doctor Ashland Hart.”
“I am Anath.” He smiled a little, leaning back against his chair as the stars hurtled around them. “You have taken time to learn our language, Ashland.”
She blushed a little with the praise, grinning back. “Of course. You are our hosts, I would not think of doing anything less.”
The boy returned from the toilet, a little pale but otherwise looking well. He sat down in the chair again, eyes averted as he cast curious glances at the Hume.
“I am Anath,” the alien said again in French. “What are you called?” There was a tone of politeness in his voice Ash recognized, something similar in the way she had heard the Hume speak to children.
“Luksin.” He looked up, a little hopefully. “Where are we going, sir?”
“Home, Luksin.” He smiled a little gently, and then stood and went to a set of cabinets locked during takeoff. He pulled the lock loose now and opened a drawer, lithe hand opalescent in the clean light as he removed a small jar. He fastidiously closed the door and opened the jar, offering its contents to the young man. “It will help your stomach.”
After only a moment’s hesitation the boy hurriedly emptied the contents of the jar, a strange green flecked paste, into his hands and then licked the thick, stringent texture off his fingers. Anath corked the jar and put it back in its place before returning to his seat. Ashland barely managed to keep from protesting. She should have some of that, too. She shot a look at the young man, but he looked so starved and pathetic she instantly eased her swift judgment of him.
“I must admit,” she said at length, turning to her rescuer. “I am relieved to speak to someone relatively intelligent, after the rest of them.”
“We are all intelligent in our own ways,” he said easily, that loose smile on his face. “But our intelligence is most like yours, so your feeling of familiarity is understandable.”
She nodded, not entirely sure she agreed with him. Ashland had always been able to empathize with human beings, no matter what culture they came from or what strange rituals they attached themselves to. Aliens were different. At least the Hume made some sense…
“I meant to ask you something.”
“You mean to ask me many things,” the Hume replied evenly. “You may ask one before you are tired.”
Ash frowned a little, curious at the way he phrased it. She felt a little tired, but certainly not compared with all the unanswered questions she needed addressed. She cleared her throat, leaning forward a little and speaking carefully in his language. “Luksin said there were more humans here, in this galaxy. How can that be, when we have sent no more from Earth?”
Anath was still for a moment. She knew that he knew the answer, somehow. It was just that he was deciding whether to give it to her or not. “You have sent none,” he said in that calming voice. “But they have come.”
Ash yawned, the back of her hand to her mouth. His answer made no sense, much like much of the speech of the Hume. “How?” What day was it, she wondered? How long had they been on that planet, in the marketplace in the air? Several lifetimes seemed to have passed in the course of however many days since they had been abducted from their (SHIPNAME).
“Ah, that is another question.” He smiled. “You have been awake for very long. There is a bed down the hall and down the stairs.”
She didn’t bother to ponder at the accuracy of his earlier sentiment. She was tired enough that the mention of the bed was the single best metaphor she could think of for necessary happiness at the moment, and she found her feet following the path of his directions. Her feet clinked lightly against the punctured metal of the stairs and she fell into the bed at the bottom. It was soft but practically so, and she was asleep before she was aware how clean the bed in the hold of a ship was.
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