The Outcasts Read online

  So many people. People like Kara.

  All of them were taller than humans, and they all had gray skin, but they weren’t all as dark as Kara. Just like human skin color went from pink to brown, theirs seemed to go from ghostly white to slate gray to obsidian black. A few were pale like ash.

  Or marble, Sue thought, and wondered why she kept thinking of Earth rocks and stones. Wherever this was, they were a long way from the colonies and a longer way from Earth.

  She looked back at the aliens. They all had the bright streaks, too, from yellows like Kara’s to fiery orange to molten-metal red.

  All of them had horns and claws, and all of them had two lines on their backs, just between their shoulders. Little bumps there, too, jagged bits of—what was it exactly? Stone? Skin?

  Seeing them made Sue’s fingers itch. Especially the one on Kara. If only she could touch that scar, soothe it with her fingers.

  But none of the aliens seemed to notice their scars, or act like they hurt. And all of them moved amid clouds of shadow, like Kara did.

  Just something about alien anatomy, then. Both the scars and the weird tricks of the light when they passed by. Sue bit her lip and stilled her twitching fingers. She’d wanted a mystery and now she had one. You didn’t solve them overnight.

  Sue tried to catch someone’s eye, a slate-skinned man with bright red eyes. He looked at her a moment, those crimson eyes widening. Then his lip curled. He shook his head and moved away from the window.

  She heard Kara’s footfalls behind her and gritted her teeth. Kara had helped her, had done what she could to nurse her back to health. But Kara had also been cold.

  Sue didn’t need her comfort. Not for this. Not just because some alien guy didn’t feel like saying hello.

  She looked down, past the little bridges. Below lay red mist and clouds.

  Angry ones. She could see whirling sand and purplish flares that looked like lightning. Was that a rainstorm or a whirlwind or both at once?

  World of Flame, Kara had said. Was that coming next? “Is your weather always like this?”

  A smile quirked Kara’s lip. Sue could see the faint hint of the yellow light inside Kara’s mouth.

  That made her wonder all over again. Was there fire somewhere deep within the stone, like magma under rock?

  How would it feel to kiss an alien?

  “Our weather,” Kara said like nothing had happened at all. Sue fought down a shudder and wished she weren’t wearing such dirty clothes.

  “Yeah. There’s a storm. Like the one I got caught in, maybe. Back on the colonies, where I come from, there’s not always…lightning like this. Not when it’s dry.”

  Kara’s expression softened. “We are outcasts.”

  Sue looked at Kara, then back at the window. She thought about the scar on Kara’s back. “The planet, down below—”

  “This is one of the Rings. Where we live. Down below is the World of Flame, like I told you yesterday.” She looked down and her lip curled.

  Sue squinted at the angry clouds. That didn’t sound good. “Can anyone…uh…does anyone live down there?”

  Kara tilted her head. “Live? Not exactly.” Her frown deepened.

  I’m asking the wrong questions.

  The space beneath the bridge flared with light bright enough to hurt Sue’s eyes.

  “So you and the others I’ve seen, you live up here?”

  “The outcasts? Yes. This—this planet, you would call it—is where we were sent. Where we were banished, in our exile.” The streaks on Kara’s skin flared with light, and Sue thought she saw her tremble.

  Sue looked down again, then up at the bridge across from hers. “You were exiled and sent here.” To a world full of storms, and lightning, and wind.

  Kara nodded. “Yes.”

  “But up here it’s all full of bridges. You have shelter.”

  “Everything we have, we built for ourselves. We were meant to live down there.” Kara looked down. At her side, her clawed hands tightened into fists.

  “Meant to live down there.” Sue bit her lip. Even tall rock people with fire for innards would have a hard time living down there. And from Kara’s stiff posture, Sue guessed Kara had tried.

  How long ago had that been? And why would something like that happen?

  She slid closer to Kara, reached out a hand, and laid it on her shoulder. The skin was hard, like stone, but warm and inviting.

  Kara twitched under Sue’s hand. Sue didn’t move it. Kara needed comfort.

  And Sue needed to ask. “Who sent you?”

  Kara’s eyes widened. Sue couldn’t tell if Kara was looking at her or not. The glow in her eyes made it hard to tell. But Sue didn’t think so. She didn’t think Kara was looking at anything at all. Her lips twisted into a snarl and the light in her mouth brightened.

  Wrong question, again. Sue let go of Kara’s shoulder and backed away as best she could.

  But Sue was a human with a bad leg on a strange world she didn’t know yet. Kara was a native, and an athletic one. Her claws snagged the fabric of Sue’s shirt. One pricked the skin beneath, and Sue bit her lip on a scream.

  Kara blinked. She pulled her claws free from the fabric and her eyes narrowed again. She shook her head as if to clear it.

  Sue stared down at the ragged tear. “You just attacked me!”

  “Human.”

  Sue closed her mouth, looked over at Kara’s claws, and shuddered. She edged backward along the bridge. What had she said? And more important than that, what would Kara do to her? She wouldn’t be able to get away for long.

  And of the aliens Sue had met so far, Kara was the friendliest.

  “Sue,” Kara tried. But her voice was no softer, and the shadows around her danced, like phantoms from some story.

  Sue raised her head. If Kara caught up to her and wanted to do something…well. She’d wanted to be a soldier once. The least she could do was act like one. “I’ve done nothing to you!”

  Kara’s hand twitched, the claws curling. Sue let out a long, slow breath.

  Kara lowered her hand and bowed her head. Sue stared at the horns. Were those a weapon too?

  “You’re right,” Kara said at last. “You have done nothing.”

  She turned away, and Sue saw the scar again.

  “They did that to you, didn’t they?”

  “What?”

  Sue snapped her mouth shut. “Nothing.”

  Chapter Three

  “I need to clean myself. I need to clean these clothes.”

  And find some new ones. Sue looked down at her torn shirt. She looked bad enough next to these beautiful aliens. They were tall. She was short. They were elegant, the kind of beings who could pull off walking around naked everywhere. Sue was a mess in wrinkled clothes. Is that why they reject me? Because next to them, I look like a damn fool?

  Kara tilted her head at Sue.

  Sue raised her hands in exasperation. Kara was the last person she wanted to talk to right now. But she wasn’t sure she had a choice. She could rush off toward one of the others and hope he’d take her in, but what if he lashed out at her like Kara had? And didn’t miss?

  Besides, Sue wasn’t convinced Kara meant it. She still felt weird about it, yeah. A little scared, to be honest. Kara was an alien, a tall one with fangs and claws who looked big and strong for her kind. But where would Sue go if she ran now? Kara had cared when a tiny, fleshy little alien who didn’t even know what the Rings were needed help. Would any of the rest of these creatures have done that?

  And Kara had gone all weird, gone away, like people who’d been at the riots sometimes did when they remembered getting beaten. Sue had seen that before. Sue had—

  She stopped herself. That wasn’t good to think about. Not right now.

  She willed herself to focus on Kara again. Kara’s voice, low and echoing, asking if she was okay when she awoke. Kara’s strange flesh, warm under her hand.

  She bit her lip, just once, and forced herself to
speak again. “Look, Kara. Just tell me. Is there anywhere I can wash these clothes?”

  “Our kind don’t use cloths often. But there is a place they can be cleaned, across the next bridge.”

  Sue smiled. “That’s good. I’m feeling better. I’ll go in a little bit.”

  Kara held out a hand. “Give them to me, then.”

  Sue looked at Kara’s hand, then up at her face. Was she smirking? Sue couldn’t tell.

  “Give them to you? You mean right now?”

  “You wanted them cleaned.”

  “Well, yes, but—” Sue’s cheeks flushed. “I can’t just take them off right now.”

  “Why?”

  Sue looked down. “Because humans don’t just get naked.”

  Kara looked blankly at her.

  “I mean, don’t just take off our clothes. The cloths we wear. Doing that means something.”

  Her cheeks burned. Kara said she knows where humans come from. What if Kara wants to see you?

  She bit her lip to keep herself from blurting the thought out. Kara was gorgeous. Kara wouldn’t want to stare at some sweaty little spacebus driver who hadn’t even showered yet.

  Hell, Kara was an alien. What would she want with a human in the first place?

  Besides, knowing Sue’s luck and the law of probability, Kara liked alien boys, anyway.

  Kara was still looking at her. Great.

  “What does it mean, Sue? Are you ashamed?”

  “Ashamed?” Sue’s head snapped up. That stung. Even though “ashamed” wasn’t all that far from “embarrassed,” and in front of these gorgeous aliens, embarrassed pretty much described it.

  “Humans wear cloth because they are ashamed of their nakedness,” Kara said.

  “What? Where did you get that?”

  “Everyone here knows that.”

  Sue’s embarrassment curdled into anger. Everyone? Everyone who’d gawked at her and turned away in disgust? That everyone?

  “You don’t know shit about humans.”

  Pulling off her shoes and socks was the easy part.

  She reached down, unzipped her pants, and pulled them down with a fierce, fluid motion before she could bother to regret it. Then she slipped off her torn shirt and stood in front of Kara in her underwear.

  The shadows around Kara curled. Was it just Sue’s imagination, or were her bioluminescent bits glowing a little brighter?

  And she wasn’t blinking. But Sue hadn’t seen her blink much before either.

  You got yourself into this. Sue stared straight at Kara and found the fastener of her bra behind her back. So finish it.

  She let the bra fall and wrapped her fingers around the band of her underwear. She swallowed hard for courage, yanked them down, and stepped out of them.

  Kara stared. Still not blinking. Did the aliens blink? Sue had noticed that they didn’t do it much. But had they done it at all, or had she just assumed they would? Was Kara just looking, or was Kara staring as hard as Sue thought she was?

  “So this is me,” Sue said. “Not ashamed.”

  “No.” Kara’s lip twitched in what Sue had begun to recognize as the beginning of a smile. “You’re not.”

  “Gonna admit now that you don’t know as much about us as you thought?”

  Kara laughed, the echoes softer than Sue had heard before. It made something thrill in her belly. Was Kara really puzzled by clothes, or had she wanted this?

  “I do admit it,” Kara said. “We’ve seen humans, but that doesn’t mean we know them. Other than what old stories tell. Old stories about ancient humans that none of us would remember anyway. Except one.”

  “Except one?”

  “The first of us is very old. He was there at the beginning of the world.”

  Sue blinked. “At the beginning of what world? There are lots of worlds out there.” She waved a hand, indicating space.

  Kara nodded. “There are. But there are more to worlds than you think, little human.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Kara’s eyes flickered. Her smile disappeared. “Do you think you got here just because you flew for a long distance?”

  “No. I got caught in a…” A wormhole. But who was she kidding? She didn’t even know what those were. Not like a real pilot would. Just well enough to steer clear of weird looking bends in space when she flew her bus.

  “In something,” she finished, flushing again.

  “There are beginnings and endings, and no one knows them all.”

  “But ‘the first’ did? I—if I wasn’t talking to someone who knew more about this world than me, I’d say that sounds more like religion than facts.”

  Kara’s lip twisted and Sue winced. Maybe Sue really had offended her.

  Kara gave her a wry smile. “Yes. I suppose it does.” She glanced over at the pile of clothes. “Do you want me to take that for you?”

  “Now?”

  “So that you can clean yourself in peace.”

  Sue chuckled. So now that I’ve already got the sexy alien looking at me, she decides to respect my privacy?

  Perfect.

  But asking her to stay would be making a confession.

  “All right,” Sue said.

  “Very well.” Kara bowed and picked up the clothes, her movements careful.

  Was she treating Sue’s things with respect, or was she just disgusted because they smelled like sweaty human? She didn’t have much time to wonder. Kara was already turning to leave.

  Sue sighed and walked into the little shower. She’d asked for privacy and now she had it.

  The wall bore controls, written in the same language of glyphs as the monitor outside. She waved her hands at one of them and a spray of chilling cold water obligingly poured from the ceiling. She waved her fingers in front of the other, and the water warmed to a soothing heat.

  She let the water flow over her a long moment, luxuriating in the feel of it on her skin, washing away the layer of grime and sweat that made her feel so dirty compared to her illuminated hosts. The water felt especially good on her leg, soothing away the tightness and the ache.

  She found a small, oblong bottle of liquid she assumed counted as soap. She opened it, wary, and sniffed at it. She still wasn’t sure the aliens had skin like humans did. Who knew what they used to clean themselves, or whether they’d been able to find some human-cleaning soap somewhere out here? Wherever out here was.

  They’re not “the aliens.” They’re the Outcasts.

  Why had she thought that? This wasn’t Earth, or any of the colonies, and they certainly weren’t human. And Kara had called her people that, but she still didn’t know if that was their name for themselves or not.

  She dabbed a little of the soap, or whatever it was, on her forearm and let it rinse away. It lathered and bubbled like soap, and didn’t sting. She waited another moment, shrugged, and slathered it over her body.

  She wished she could have asked Kara. She wished Kara were here, behind her, those golden eyes boring into her back.

  Would she like what she saw? Sue wasn’t pretty, or she’d never thought she was. Not skinny enough, her skin too pocked with dark little spots. But had Kara even seen a human before? She’d seemed intrigued.

  Did Kara take showers? Sue guessed she would have to. Otherwise she wouldn’t have found a shower in here, and would have had to ask for some kind of basin and climb into it.

  A little shiver ran up her back at the thought of Kara’s gray skin with water beading on it. What would it do to those little cracks of light on Kara’s body? Were they some kind of flame that water might put out?

  Not put out. They were part of Kara, and she wouldn’t just go cold.

  What exactly are you made of?

  She ran her fingers through her hair. They snagged on a tangle and she looked around, realizing she’d forgotten about shampoo. But there wasn’t anything else around. Which only made sense. The aliens—the Outcasts—didn’t have hair. Sue lathered some of the
soap into her hair and squinched her eyes shut tight, just in case alien soap would sting her eyes.

  It didn’t. It lathered and rinsed perfectly fine, and Sue wondered again how much Kara knew about humans, and why she would take so much care with this one.

  Chapter Four

  Sue lounged on the cot, waiting for Kara. For better or for worse, she had something to prove now. Kara’s weird theories about humans made no sense.

  And, okay, maybe she also wanted to show off. Ever since Kara had stared at her before, she’d wondered: Was Kara doing all of this because she had a thing for humans?

  Well, if she did, she’d find Sue trying her best to look sexy.

  With emphasis on the trying. The one thing Sue hadn’t found was a hairbrush. Which made perfect sense, as no one who’d passed by had hair. But it meant Sue had to do the best she could with her fingers. She hadn’t quite ended up with flowing tresses.

  Then again, she thought, dragging her fingers through a tangled lock of hair, would it matter? Did the Outcasts expect her hair to look nice? The only one she was sure had seen it was Kara.

  But then there were the scars running down her leg, where they’d opened her skin and rearranged things and sewn her back together. Rich people could afford to have their scars smoothed, but not spacebus drivers. And compared to Kara, she looked so ordinary. Broken. Imperfect.

  Kara has scars too.

  Sue bit her lip. But it was true, wasn’t it? And she was sensitive about them, too, just like Sue was about hers. Even those bright yellow streaks—were those scars too?

  The soft hiss of the door opening interrupted her thoughts. She looked up to see Kara, cradling Sue’s clean clothes in her hands. She tilted her head at the doorframe and it slid open.

  “Your…clothes,” she said and dropped them on the floor in front of Sue.

  Well, that was fine. They’d have no time to get too wrinkled, since Sue was about to put them on. And besides, there was no place to hang them up anyway.