"Distress, all humans gone. Human is human is invader."
Miss Barnes sighed. "Do you know where they are?"
"No."
Sherry sat back, taking her ear away from the door. Poor Zelks! Even through the translator, he sounded worried.
"If you will stay a little while, we can try to get you more information about the camp they're holding the lerkkal in."
"Doubt, time is death."
"And information is life."
Silence fell, and Sherry started to get nervous. Had they left? She hadn't heard footsteps, and they were usually pretty loud.
"Agreement. Time is one day."
Sherry sighed in relief, then clapped her hands over her mouth when she heard how loud it was.
The door jerked open. "Sherry!"
Sherry looked up, and up, and up from her seat on the second step, both hands still covering her mouth.
Miss Barnes towered over her. "Have you been listening the whole time?"
Sherry uncovered her mouth and stood up. "You won't tell me anything, what else was I supposed to do?"
"We didn't tell you for your own protection, how many times do I have to tell you that before you'll believe me? If you don't know anything they won't hurt you."
"The lerkkal they rounded up didn't know anything either."
"That's different. They don't see the lerkkal as people."
"And the people in the riot. Did they ask to find out if they knew something before they were hurt?"
"It was a riot, Sherry, people get hurt."
"But how do you know I won't get hurt if I don't know anything? Knowledge is life, you said it yourself, and how can I stay away from trouble if I don't know where it is?"
Zelks spun up beside Miss Barnes. "Agreement. Knowledge is life."
"Not you too." Miss Barnes closed her eyes for a few seconds.
"Zelks, have you heard anything about the Averys?"
"Sherry, I thought--"
"Regrets, names hide."
Sherry sighed "Thanks anyway, Zelks. Is there something I can do to help you?"
"No," Miss Barnes interrupted. "I told the Averys I'd keep you safe."
Sherry looked down, clenching her teeth. "Fine."
Zelks watched them both for a few seconds. "Melbarnes, information seeker?"
"Of course." Miss Barnes nodded. "I'll be away for a few hours, please stay inside and away from the windows. John should be back soon."
Sherry nodded without looking up.
The lock clicked behind Miss Barnes, too fast to be anything but an auto-lock. It reminded Sherry again that she couldn't leave the house, not if she wanted to get back in again without telling Miss Barnes that she had left.
"Tea, Zelks?" She had to do something, at least drinking tea would be something.
"Confusion. Hot day, hot drink?"
"Oh yeah, Miss Barnes said something about how this was tropical." Sherry grinned at Zelks. "On Earth, this is normal, not hot. What's your city like?"
"Appreciation. Water-ice beauty construction. Spaces small private, large public. Sleep is home, eat is home, other is public. Crowds, friends, work, play, many. Home is happiness."
"So why did you leave home, and come here? Do you miss your family?"
"Sadness. Family voice, but not touch. Here is knowledge."
"What do you mean, 'here is knowledge'?" Sherry poked at her tea and poured herself a mug full.
"Study. Plants, animals, humans, here. Knowledge finds, knowledge talks."
"You're studying us?" Sherry blinked, then took a sip of her tea. "Creepy. But then, we're studying you, so I guess that's fair."
"Curiosity. Earth description?"
"Well, the part I grew up in was about this warm in the late spring. It got a lot hotter through the summer." She grinned, and took another sip of her tea. "We've carried our cities here, though--the houses and streets and shops all remind me of home, only they're newer. The only real difference I've noticed is that there are more plants in the city here, and more cars on the road on Earth. Everybody walks here, it's kinda nice to talk to people while you're walking. On Earth, everybody's in their car and if they stop to talk, the people behind them get mad."
"Concern, no friends?"
"Oh, yes friends. My description made it sound awfully unfriendly, didn't it? We just don't usually meet while travelling around the city, we meet when we get to where we're going." Sherry looked at her watch. Mr. Barnes wasn't home yet. Hadn't Miss Barnes said he'd be in soon?
"Spaces private large," Zelks said.
"Really? This isn't a very big house. Well. by human standards it isn't. Say, if you don't mind me asking. why is your translator so much better than the human-made one you used in your store?"
"Language simple, human. Sounds only."
"You mean your language is only partly sound? What else does it use?"
The front door opened. "John? Did you--"
"He's not here yet."
Miss Barnes walked into the kitchen. "He was supposed to be here before I left." She was turning her ring around and around on her finger. "Have there been any calls?"
Sherry shook her head. "Not that I would have answered them," she said.
"Of course, you're right." She walked to the counter, looked out the window, and let the blind drop back over the opening.
"Sit," Sherry said, standing up and pointing at her chair. "I'll make you some tea."
Miss Barnes sat, her frown clearing for a half-second before returning. She accepted the steaming cup, and turned it around and around on the table.
"He's doing something dangerous, isn't he?" Sherry said quietly.
Miss Barnes turned her cup a few more times. "Is it that obvious?"
Sherry nodded.
Miss Barnes took a sip of her tea, and stared into the steam as she put the cup back on the table. "I knew it was dangerous. But somebody had to do it, and he volunteered. Always the hero, my John." She forced a smile, and tears started streaming down her cheeks.
"He may have just been caught--" Sherry started hesitantly.
Miss Barnes shook her head. "Maybe, but I doubt it. He told me what was at stake, even if he couldn't tell me what he had to do. I just hope he succeeded, before--" she sniffed, and choked down another sip of tea.
Sherry nodded, at a complete loss for words. She chewed the inside of her lip, and watched Miss Barnes try not to cry.
Zelks didn't move, the whole time. Sherry glanced at him a few times, and saw him always looking steadily back at her.
Miss Barnes swallowed a few times with a little gasping sound. "Excuse me," she said, and walked briskly out of the kitchen and down the hall. The door to her bedroom closed with a quiet click.
Sherry turned to look back at Zelks. "I, uh, think she might be a while." She looked down, and caught sight of Miss Barnes' bag. Which just might have the information Zelks needed in it.
It was really not her place to go through it, she argued with herself. But the longer Zelks waited, the worse off the captured lerkkal were likely to be.
Sherry slid from her chair and picked up the bag.
Card holder, tissue, phone, bookreader, blank paper, a crumpled shopping list, a portable makeup kit. Sherry put everything but the paper and the bookreader back in the bag and put it back on the floor.
"Confusion, bag is public?"
"Ssh," Sherry said. "No, the bag is private. But your information might be in here." She tapped the bookreader's cover.
"Distress, space private invasion."
"No, Zelks, it's ok. She might be annoyed, but this won't damage her."
"Doubt, space private is absolute?"
"No, it's just polite, not absolute, that you don't look into somebody's private space."
Sherry turned the bookreader on. It was a different model than hers, and it took a few seconds to find all the programs she wanted. Now, where would she have filed the info away... Sherry started browsing the list view, checking the title and first few words of all the contents.
Nothing that looked like what she wanted in the general and miscellaneous areas, so she moved on. It would probably be hidden and not filed away under "Top secret information for Zelks" or anything even remotely obvious. Maybe with the stuff for her classes, there would be a lot there to hide it in.
Sherry glanced over her shoulder as she started looking through the assignments and tests, feeling vaguely guilty and at the same time like she was peeking into an alternate universe. There was the quiz she was supposed to have written two days ago. The answer key to the assignment due the day the school closed.
The last page of notes from the last day of school didn't look familiar. Sherry frowned, and opened it.
No, just more stuff about the second wave of colonists. They had ended early that day.
She skimmed titles in other classes' notes, occasionally opening one that looked promising. Nothing, nothing, nothing. All class notes. Sherry took a deep breath and dove into the student information. She scanned the list of names, alphabetical by last name, and dropped the pen when she saw one "Smith, Zelks" apparently enrolled in a class at her school.
She opened it with her thumbnail, and bent over to get the pen off the floor. Instead of a student photo, there was a map of some sort, and instead of grades and comments, statistics and instructions.
"Eureka," she said quietly, and pushed the bookreader across the table.
Zelks pulled it closer, and placed his translator box next to it. It had a screen too, Sherry saw, now that she finally got a clear look at it.
"Information copy," he said.
Sherry leaned over the table and pressed her thumbnail into the screen to start the transfer. "I didn't know you had bookreaders like ours."
"Translator," Zelks said.
Miss Barnes' bookreader beeped and Zelks' buzzed at the same time.
"Really? Can I see?"
Zelks pushed both machines across the table. They both had the same picture, but Zelks' translator had very oddly shaped letters in the same layout as the writing she was expecting.
"Wow, I didn't think we had anything that could translate your writing."
Zelks pulled his translator back to his side of the table.
"Not technology human."
"Oh."
Sherry and Zelks started reading their respective copies.
A few minutes later, a door down the hall opened, and soft footsteps moved toward the kitchen. Sherry tensed, looked from Miss Barnes' bag to the hall entrance, and tried to decide if she had enough time to put the bookreader back.
Miss Barnes sat down with them, not even noticing that Sherry had her bookreader out. She sniffed once. "Sorry to keep you waiting, Zelks. You try to prepare for something like this, but..." She sighed, letting her voice trail off. "Let me get those notes for you, and get translating them."
Miss Barnes pushed herself to her feet. Sherry bit her lip, and tried to think of how to tell her before she discovered it on her own.
"Reassurance, completed translation." Zelks patted his translator.
"Pardon?"
Sherry gulped, and lifted the bookreader. "I, uh, found the notes, and gave them to Zelks." She held the bookreader out, offering it back.
"I thought I told you--"
"It's safer for me to know nothing? You did. And I don't buy it. You told me the Averys were off doing something super important and I could be used as a hostage against them, and I don't buy that either. I'm just a foster kid, and they've known me for less than two months. That's a really sucky kind of hostage, if you ask me."
Miss Barnes' cheeks turned red, to match her bloodshot eyes. "If it weren't true, do you think I'd have brought you here? You're not the only foster kid they missed when they rounded up everybody whose parents were arrested or missing. I was told specifically to get you, for exactly the reasons I gave you. And I was told to keep you out of it."
"Oh," was all Sherry could manage. "Um."
"Now please, just go downstairs, forget what you learned tonight, and respect the Averys' wishes." Miss Barnes slumped into her chair.
Sherry put the bookreader down silently and headed for the stairs.
#
The basement door swung open and Sherry looked up.
"Come upstairs, please," Miss Barnes said. "Zelks wants to say goodbye."
Sherry jumped to her feet and ran up the stairs two at time.
She paused at the top of the stairs. "I'm sorry. I didn't know how long you'd be, and Zelks said earlier that the longer he waited the more hurt lerkkal there would be."
Miss Barnes nodded.
Sherry hesitated, then went past her into the living room. Zelks was waiting, his translator tucked away again.
"Friend-customer Sherry. Help is knowledge." One of the eyes facing her closed, then opened. "Seekers find. Shop seeker. Self leaves."
"Where are you going?"
"Determined, lerkkal rescue."
"I wish I had some way to help you," Sherry said. "Good luck."
"Seekers find," Zelks repeated, and the same eye closed briefly.
A wink? Sherry tried to figure out what he could be trying to tell her. She looked up and met his eyes. "Good bye," she said, and winked. "I hope to see you again when this is all over."
"Hope is humble. Dream is vast."
Zelks spun away toward the back door, an eye or three always watching Sherry as he turned.