“I do,” Rhys said.
The little one-room flat was a ruckus of equipment: bits of old consoles and bug pans, piles of disintegrating boxes and papers, worm-eaten books, tangles of leaking wires, and cracked bottles of organic feed and roach fluid. Bug cages and aquariums took up one wall. Dead locusts littered the floor. The dim lighting was in part due to the strain on the room’s internal grid—most of the power was being rerouted to the water pumps that fed the frogs, cicadas, mark flies, turtles, tadpoles, water skimmers, and multitudes of fish in various states of living and dying that clogged the aquariums.
“How have you faired? Let me get you something,” Abdul-Nasser said. “Tea, something.”
“Thank you,” Rhys said.
Abdul-Nasser wended his way around the cluttered room to the wall of the kitchen. Dishes overflowed the tiny sink. Flies circled the dirty plates. When Rhys followed after him to help with the tea, he saw something crawling in the sink—the damp, filthy plates bred maggots.
“Maybe we can just sit and talk,” Rhys said.
Abdul-Nasser shook his head. His hair was tucked under a turban, so Rhys did not have to look at the state of it, but Abdul-Nasser did stink, as if he did not wash even for the ablution.
“No,” Abdul-Nasser said. “I am still civilized. We must have tea.”
He clattered around, rinsed out a dirty teapot, and tried to get the fire bugs in his hot plate to stir.
In the end, the tea was lukewarm, in dirty cups, set on a tea table that had once been a com counter. There were no chairs. They sat on old cushions that stank of dogs.
“So you are a magician now,” Abdul-Nasser said. “Those old women took you in?”
“They did.”
“No doubt they agreed with what you did.”
Rhys sighed. “It was some time ago.”
“Yes. I have not seen your father since.”
“Have you been home?”
“A time or two.”
“You’ve seen my sisters?”
“Yes, all married now.”
“To whom?”
“Best I can recall, a local magistrate. The one who mooned over them.”
“Nikou Bahman. The one my father hated.”
“Yes, that man.”
Rhys stared at the tea. He could not bring himself to drink it. He kept thinking of the maggots in the sink.
“He already had eight wives,” Rhys said.
“Did you expect it would go differently? Your sisters, the household, were disgraced when you did not follow your father’s will. God’s will. Your father thought no one would take them, not even as a ninth or twelfth wife.”
Rhys took a deep breath. “But they married.”
“Yes.”
“Good. Children?”
“All boys. You have four nephews.” Abdul-Nasser picked up his tea but did not drink it. He peered at Rhys. “But you did not come to me for news of your house. Not after eight years.”
“No,” Rhys said. He pulled the transmission canisters from his tunic pocket and set them on the table. “I need to read these. Our com man may have died for them.”
Abdul-Nasser set down his tea and took one of the rectangles into his hand. He rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, pressed it to his ear and shook it.
“Ah,” he said. “This is expensive.” He bit it. “This is government. Nasheenian.”
“Can you read it?”
“Yes.” Abdul-Nasser stood, and went to a tangle of equipment piled at the far end of the aquarium wall. He unpacked some material, uncovered a com console, and inserted the rectangle into the panel. He tapped out a signal to the chittering bugs in the console.
Rhys got up and stood next to him.
A strong female voice bled out from the speakers; the cadence and inflection were like Nyx’s, only more stilted, more educated.
They only listened to half of the first canister.
It was enough.
“Can you get me a transcription of this?” Rhys asked with a growing sense of dread, as Nyx’s dead sister talked about the end of the war, the end of Chenja. He thought of Khos and Inaya, and the alien with the big laugh.
Abdul-Nasser pressed a button on the console. “Put your hand here,” he told Rhys, and Rhys put his hand on the faceplate next to the printer plate. He felt a soft prickling on his hand.
Blank organic paper began to roll out of the console.
“It will respond only to your touch,” Abdul-Nasser said. “I’ve locked it as well, for forty-eight hours from now. It won’t open until then. Keep it close until you need it. I hope you have a trustworthy employer.”
Rhys stared at the paper as it came out of the machine, even as Kine’s voice continued to assault him from the speakers.
“What sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into?” Abdul-Nasser asked, staring at the speakers as if the voice would take on human form and step from the machine with a flaming sword.
“More than I know,” Rhys said. “You’ll destroy these?”
“Oh, yes. The moment it’s done transcribing. You best not stay long.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle,” Rhys said.
“You were bound for trouble. Born under an inauspicious star, your mother said.”
The printer stopped. Abdul-Nasser tucked the papers into an organic case and handed them to Rhys.
“This is important,” Rhys said. “I need to get this back to my employer and decide what we’re going to do with it.”
“Your employer is Nasheenian,” Abdul-Nasser said.
“Think what you will,” Rhys said. He tucked the organic case into his satchel. “I should go. I said I wouldn’t be long.”
“Said that to a woman? How old are you, Rakhshan?”
“You sound like my father.”
Abdul-Nasser grunted. He rubbed at his arms. “Eh,” he said.
Rhys moved to the door. He waved the red roaches away and unbolted the doors. They moved easily. He wished all bugs were as well-trained as his uncle’s.
Abdul-Nasser stayed close behind. Rhys could smell him. Rhys turned, looked into his uncle’s weeping eyes.
“I did the right thing,” Rhys said.
Abdul-Nasser said, “That is between you and God.”
Rhys gripped the old man’s arms. “Stay away from the venom,” he said.
“Be careful among the women,” Abdul-Nasser said.
Rhys made to pull away, but Abdul-Nasser held him.
“And know this,” Abdul-Nasser said. “You are our last boy, the only one with our name. Whatever you do, whatever you need, you come to me. Ten hours or ten years from now.”
“I know, Uncle,” Rhys said.
“Good.” Abdul-Nasser released him, and quickly shut the door.
Rhys pressed his hand to his satchel and the transcription, reassuring himself it was still there. He started back through the corridor and down the open stair. He could still hear Kine’s voice talking with antiseptic clarity about the things Ras Tiegans had done to shifters, the things Nasheen would do to shifters. The eradication of a
