“Uh …” Ahmed said. “We’re …”
“Come here,” his grandfather said.
Ahmed slowly stepped up to him and the old man looked him up and down. “You don’t look like my son.”
Ahmed scoffed. “The last time you saw him he was about four years old.”
I held my breath. Then I let it out with relief as the old man smiled and laughed softly. “You are really my grandson?”
Ahmed brought a picture from his pocket. “This is you, Grandma, and my father just before they left for Earth.”
His grandfather stared at it for a very long time.
“That … monster will let us out now?” someone impatiently asked behind them.
Ahmed’s grandfather was crying. “I haven’t seen this photo in … such a long time. It’s why I came back.”
“There’s one more of us,” an African woman said in Igbo, pushing to the front. She wore jeans and a dirty purple sweater. Ahmed looked back at me and I stepped forward. The woman hesitated, glancing at and looking away from my eyes and said, “He’s being held captive in the cockpit, I think.” She pointed behind her. “It’s through the conference room.”
“Arinze,” I said.
She nodded.
“Troublesome sellout,” Ahmed’s grandpa mumbled. “Nigerians.” He spoke the name of my people like he was spitting dirt from his mouth. I frowned.
The women who’d spoken Igbo sucked her teeth loudly and deliberately. “Keep talking and see
Even when they lived and were born on Mars, people were still people.
Ahmed’s and my eyes met for a half second. Then he looked away. “I’ll go,” I said.
“I’ll go with you,” the Igbo woman said.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I know what’s going on. Just … wait for him outside.” This time, I was the one who didn’t want to meet her eyes. I switched to English. She spoke Igbo with an English accent, so I suspected she’d understand, as would more of the others. “You all need to get off. There isn’t time. This shuttle is going to take off soon.”
“What!” a man said. “Impossible! There can’t be any fuel left. …”
People started translating for each other, and there were more exclamations of surprise.
“Who cares,” a woman said. “Show us out of here! I can’t stand being on a shuttle any longer!”
Everyone began pushing forward again. As they crammed past me, I told Ahmed, “Go with them. They need someone who knows … Earth.”
“Okay. But hurry out,” he said, taking and squeezing my hand. His other was holding the hand of his grandfather.
“I’ll be all right.”
I watched them all file down the corridor. Then I walked into the conference room to attend the strangest meeting of my life.
The conference room was spacious with a high ceiling and windows the size of the walls (which were currently covered with the ship’s protective white metal exterior). Near the back were shelves of books and three exercise bicycles. This large room was probably normally beautiful. But at the moment it was filthy and stinky. There were plastic tubs brimming with urine and feces and sacks of garbage. Had they been allowed to leave the room for anything? How long had they been trapped in there? I hurried to the door on the other side.
It easily opened and led into another passageway that was even narrower than the other one. It went on and on. I passed sealed doorways on my left and right. I frowned realizing something. Maybe the creature was allowing the doors to open. Maybe it had opened the door to the outside so that Ahmed and I could come in and rescue the people. I had so many answers, yet I had even more questions.
Finally, I reached a small round door. It felt like metal but it looked like wood. Nervous, I took a deep breath, tugging at one of my long braids. Suddenly the door slid open and I was standing before a tall very dark-skinned Nigerian man. Behind him was a round sunshine-filled room. The cockpit window must have been recently opened, for I hadn’t seen this on the outside. Every inch of wall was packed with virtual sensors, small and large screens, and soft buttons.
In the middle of it all, manipulating the ship’s virtual controls, was the … thing. It looked like something out of the deep ocean. Wet, red, bloblike, formless. I imagined that it would have fit perfectly into the glasslike thing that had attacked Ahmed and me outside.
It smoothly pulled its many filament-like appendages in, rose up, and molded itself into an exact replica of my face, shifting and changing colors to even imitate my dark skin tone. I gasped, clapping my hands over my mouth. It smiled at me.
Terrified, I looked up at Arinze who was still standing there. “I—”
His face curled, and he grabbed me. He pushed me back and slammed me against the wall. For the third time in the last hour all the air left my chest. I grabbed at his hands and dug my nails into them. His grip loosened and I seized the opportunity to slide away.
My eyes located a wrench. I grabbed it and raised it toward one of the screens. Arinze froze and the creature melted from my shape back into a blob.
“I swear I’ll … I’ll smash this!” I screamed, utterly hysterical by this point. “May the fleas of a thousand camels nest in your hair!” I was hurting all over, shaking, full of too much adrenaline and there was a red alien in the middle of the room with appendages snaking out in multiple directions like some sort of giant amoeba! I strained to keep the tears from dribbling for my eyes. The last thing I needed was for my vision to blur. I focused on the alien, sharpening to a molecular level. … I immediately pulled back, further shaken. I hadn’t seen cells; I saw something more like metal balls.
“Please don’t break that,” Arinze said in Igbo. His accent was vaguely Nigerian, Yoruba. But not quite. How long had he been on Mars? He had to have been born there. He looked about thirty. Yet he had three short vertical tribal markings on each cheek. So they were still practicing that tradition even on Mars?
“We need that to navigate properly,” he said.
“You just nearly
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was … I thought you were going to hurt it. It’s … it’s like a snail without a shell until it makes a new living shell.”
I didn’t lower my wrench.
“That’s … that’s why it attacked you,” he said. “Then we realized a lot of things.” He paused. “What are you?”
“I’m human. A shadow speaker.” I shook my head. “It’s a long story.”
He stared at me. I knew he was making up his mind. I’d made mine up. If he tried anything, I’d smash the screen and then smash his head. “Arinze,” I said, quickly. “I know who you are. I know you have befriended this creature. You understand each other.”
“How do you know?” he snapped. “What can you know?”
The creature stretched a narrow filament and touched Arinze’s forehead. Affectionately. Arinze seemed to relax.
I felt a pinch of envy. I was constantly getting attacked because of what I looked like. This creature had no shape and could look like anything it wanted. And then it could create an exo-skin that it could wear or send to do what it asked … at least until it sunk into the sand on a planet with stronger gravity than it was used to. I wondered why it had chosen to make its exo-skin look like a giant bipedal grasshopper.
“It ‘reads’ things through vibration,” I said. “I am similar. I read things by closeness and focusing. I read it as it read me. You know I’m right. It has told you. Trust it.”
“Put the wrench down,” he said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“How do I know?”
He sighed and sat on a stool, now rubbing his own temples. “You know. You both know.”
I didn’t put it down. “Please,” I said. “I’m tired of fighting.” I leaned against the controls, feeling very, very tired. “What is it about me that everyone wants to attack? I just came here to
