Nobody Left Behind 13

I think we're past the halfway point now. Sarsuk still hasn't described what dating Nyakkat was like.

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Dad peeked into Siki’s bedroom with frustrated ears. He looked around at the potted plants he’d set up at the side of the room, then growled softly in frustration. Before she could ask, he said, “Hey sweetie, have you seen my old watering can?”

She swallowed but kept her ears neutral. “Uh, no, I don’t think so,” she lied. “Didn’t you throw it out?”

“No, I’d never do that. Darn it,” he huffed. “Could have sworn it was in the storage room.”

But despite how she tried to hide her uneasiness, her father seemed to sense it. “What’s wrong? Something bothering you?”

“Uh, no?” squeaked Siki. After a moment of thought, she said, “Well, it’s just this guy at work.”

Dad looked surprised. “Don’t tell me you broke up with your boyfriend and are looking at other guys.”

She scrambled to sit up from where she’d been reclining, tossing her strand on the nightstand. “Oh, no, no, nothing like that,” she assured him. “This isn’t a guy I’d ever date.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, but his ears slowly lowered. “So, what about him?”

“Well, he’s a…” Dang it! I really didn’t want to talk about Sarsuk with my parents. She bit her lip, trying to think of what she could say without freaking him out. All the geroo from the old ship were skittish about the krakun and got anxious if anyone even mentioned them. Besides, Doctor Palani wanted Sarsuk’s existence kept secret. “He used to be a… You’re not going to freak out if I tell you this, are you?”

He gave her a stern look. “Um, I think I’ll be on the edge of a freak-out if you don’t tell me.”

Her ears frowned low. In a quieter voice, she said, “Well, it’s just this guy… He’s got a record.”

“He’s a criminal?” shouted Dad, his ears up and fur bristling. “You’re working alongside a criminal? Why would they hire an ex-con?”

Siki jumped up to her paws and waved her palms excitedly, trying to quiet her father. “No! No, it’s not like that. He doesn’t work there,” she assured him. Keeping her voice down, she hissed, “He’s a … test subject, y’know? They’re doing experiments on him, and he doesn’t have much say in the matter.”

“Oh. Oh!” he said, calming back down. Then, with renewed concern, “Well, try to keep your distance from him.”

“Yeah, don’t worry. They won’t let me get close.”

Dad smiled and nodded. “Okay, so what about him?”

Siki lowered herself back down on the bed and avoided her father’s eyes. “Well, we’ve been talking,” she said quietly. “He claims he didn’t do anything wrong, that he got framed.”

Dad leaned against her door frame, his ears concerned, not angry. “So, he wants your help getting a new trial?”

“Nah, he’s not eligible. He’s pretty much stuck,” said Siki. “But I was wondering what you think.”

She looked up and opened one palm, as if weighing two possibilities. “I don’t get the sense he was ever a ‘good guy’, and maybe he did do some questionable things in the past,” she admitted. Then opening her other palm, she added, “But I also think I believe him that he never did the thing that landed him … well, where he is.”

Dad raised one ear. “What I think?”

“Yeah, do you think that’s possible?” asked Siki. “He said this gal he was attracted to used him, stole something, and they figured it was an inside job, that he did it.”

She looked back down. “He said they didn’t even let him talk at the trial, to tell his side of the story.” She shrugged. “There’s no way I’ll ever know the truth, but do you think that’s possible, that he got screwed over?”

“Watch your language, young lady,” he said in gentler tones than his usual scolding.

“Sorry. But do you?”

“Maybe?” he admitted. “I’d like to think that the legal system here on Costaruna is fair, but it’s not like I know any criminals.”

She studied the paws in her lap. “Oh.”

Dad frowned. “But back on the ship … well, there was always gossip about people taking the blame for things they didn’t do.” He sighed, adding, “I think that was the krakun’s fault.”

Her ears perked in surprise at her father bringing up their old overseers. “The krakun?”

He sat down on the bed beside her. “Yeah, I don’t like talking about it, but there’s little point in hiding things from you now that you’re so grown up. I think the company put a lot of pressure on security and the judges back then. They expected someone found guilty for every crime and that the cases closed quickly,” he explained. “I think a lot of people didn’t get fair trials and were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. When bad things happened, people just ran. No one wanted to risk getting blamed.”

From the corner of her eyes, Siki stared at him with muzzle slightly agape. She had so few memories of the ship and knew nothing about their legal system. She asked, “Really? Because we were… Because the krakun don’t care about the geroo?”

“I’m not sure. It could just be the way the krakun are,” he admitted. He used the geroo idiom, “I think they’d rather pull a tooth than see if it gets better later.”

Her ears drooped. “So, you think maybe he did get blamed for something he didn’t do?”

“Well, that was back on the ship.” He put an arm around her shoulders and kissed the side of her head. “I’m hoping the lio aren’t the same way. I’m just saying that it’s possible. I know that if your friend got in trouble under Krakuntec rule, for example, I’d be pretty open-minded.”

# # #

Siki shook her head, quietly hissing, “No, absolutely not.”

“Oh, c’mon!” whined the big lizard. “Tell me you never stayed up late watching funny videos.”

“Of course, I have,” she admitted, “but I was ready to hit ‘Pause’ and then pretend I was asleep the whole time.” Mom caught her several times growing up—and took away her strand as punishment—but there were many more times she hadn’t.

“I can…” Sarsuk started to reply, but lacking a body limited his options, “...pretend I’m asleep.”

She covered her face with her palms, groaning, “Leaving my strand streaming videos isn’t bending the rules, it’s begging Palani to fire me.” Even if the sounds didn’t alert a security guard overnight, Palani would surely notice when he opened the lab in the morning. Siki stood and stared the krakun down. “I won’t do it.”

Sarsuk groaned and let his head hang low. “You don’t understand what it’s like.”

“Look, I might not be able to visualize what it’s like to be alone for five thousand years, but I’m perfectly capable of imagining being bored overnight,” said the geroo with a roll of her eyes. “I’m sure it’s no fun, but it’s not nearly as big a deal as you’re making it out to be.”

He raised his chin and looked her in the eyes. “That’s because, and I’m not trying to be mean here,” he said calmly, “you’re imagining what it would be like for a geroo-sized brain.”

“You’re really pissing me off, Sarsuk.”

“I’m sorry!” he groaned.

Siki turned and stomped about, grumbling, “We’ve all been bored, and I refuse to believe that it’s unbearably torturous for you just because your brain is big.”

“That’s because you can’t remember every last mistake you’ve ever made with perfect, unerring clarity.”

That gave her pause. Siki had made mistakes—like the doll incident—and sometimes her conscience would torture her by focusing on the awful memories, but as bad as those experiences were, at least her memory was imperfect and fading. What if she could remember it as clearly as watching a video? What if she thought about them every night?

“We all say and do things we regret, Siki,” he whispered, “but I’ve done more regrettable things every year than most, and I’ve had thousands of years to accumulate those mistakes.”

A lump formed in her stomach, and she retook her seat. “Is that how you’re spending your nights and weekends—haunted by ghosts?”

“Yes,” said Sarsuk, “and more literally than you can imagine.”

She perked an ear, confused. “Come again?”

He drew his lips tightly together for a bit as if contemplating whether he should elaborate. Eventually, he said, “Well, I told you about my job as commissioner…”

When he paused, she said, “Yeah, frightening the geroo.”

“Frightening the geroo by punishing some of the criminals myself,” he clarified.

“Yeah, so?”

His solid green eyes studied her a moment. “You do understand what I’m talking about, right?” Sarsuk frowned. “I wasn’t spanking them. I didn’t send them to bed without supper.”

Siki looked away and nodded. The conversation had taken an unexpectedly grown-up turn. “You’re talking about executions.”

A pause. “Messy, horrible executions.”

Mom and Dad had told her a bit about their life aboard a gateship. Back then, executions were common—not that they had many criminals, but the company didn’t allow geroo to die of old age. Instead, they euthanized crewmembers with a lethal drug when they reached sixty. No one called execution at the time, but that’s what it was.

Though a horrible and needlessly cruel policy, at least each death was peaceful and humane. She looked up at Sarsuk once more. She didn’t truly have a sense of how big the krakun had been before his own execution, but he had to have been huge. If such a huge creature even grabbed a geroo, he’d probably break their bones…

“I didn’t need to try imagining that.” she said, choking up slightly.

But instead of apologizing, he replied, “Well, I don’t even have to try to remember each horrible moment.” Sarsuk went quiet for a bit before adding, “And of all the geroo I’ve tried to execute, the one I regret most was a guy a few years older than you. A guy by the name of Kanti.”

Their eyes met once more and Sarsuk explained, “You see Kanti was basically me as a geroo—just a nobody with no real friends, doing a job he hated, and blamed for a crime that he didn’t commit.”

But this gave her pause. He executed an innocent? She asked, “You knew he was innocent at the time? Sarsuk?” But he didn’t respond. “I’m asking you a serious question. Did you know he was innocent?”

“Yes, okay?” blurted the gigantic lizard with some distress. “I knew it wasn’t his fault, but I was going to execute him anyway.”

Her head spun at the horror, and she stared at him with mouth agape. “Why?”

“It’s… It’s not important.”

Her ears fell back in anger. “You murdered an innocent guy? Yeah, that sounds very important!”

“Well, it’s not. I made a bad decision,” he said. “I made a regrettable decision. I’m sorry, but I tried to execute him.”

Siki felt a faint ray of hope. “You tried? You couldn’t bring yourself to do it?”

Instead of answering, Sarsuk asked, “Do you know what the recycler is aboard a gateship?” She shrugged. “Well, at the bottom of every ship, they build a recycler around an amphipentauxeparietal tesserachora—”

She smirked, thinking about the story of his lost virginity. “The thing you were studying in school?”

“Yeah, that thing.” He blushed slightly. “Anyhow, it has the ability to disrupt all molecular bonds. So, if a water molecule floats in, two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom float out. It breaks everything down.”

Her ears fell back once more. “I really don’t want to know where this is going, do I?”

He nodded. “I was going to toss this Kanti guy in and reduce him to a cloud of atoms.”

Siki covered her open mouth with both paws. “How … horrible.”

To her surprise, the krakun smiled. “But he got the last laugh, you see. As I was reaching to grab him, Kanti jumped into the recycler, and I lost everything from the middle of my forearm down.”

“That… That…”

“Yes, it hurt a lot,” he said with a nod. “And that should have been the end of the story.”

She blinked and stared at him a moment longer. “But…?”

“But the thing is … Kanti didn’t die,” said Sarsuk. “The recycler didn’t recycle him.”

Siki squinted and studied him a moment in silence. “Is that … possible?”

The krakun sighed. “I didn’t get a good grade in the first course in fifth-dimensional waveguides,” he said, “but I’d have said it was impossible … if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve seen Kanti twice more since that day.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qlAREsszKUNZZkbl7kRigRROqnipSC3Hcs9YNmrb78w/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?