February, Year 16 of the Anglo-American Alliance
The wide brim of a straw hat concealed the face of the tall man who stole through the shadows like a ghost, keeping close to the brick walls of the narrow back alley. The night was quiet and still, the small town seemingly deserted. But safe as it seemed, the man was not willing to take any chances. Though he wore hard-soled shoes and though the ground was scattered with broken glass and debris, his footsteps made no sound, nor, though he was moving quickly, did his breathing.
The alley connected with two others, and at the corner the man stopped, pressing himself flat against the wall as he waited. He did not wait long. Before a minute was up, four short knocks sounded on the wall.
The man answered with three of his own, then stepped out into the half-light provided by the bright moon. Another figure also detached itself from the shadows; his companion had arrived as silently as he himself. Good.
“Is it safe?” asked a woman’s low-pitched voice.
“It is safe,” the man replied, his own voice soft and husky. “You learn quickly, Number One.”
The woman moved closer. She was very nearly as tall as him, and around the same age, but the light of the moon picked up premature strands of silver in her long, dark hair.
“I brought it,” she said in that curious low voice. “What you asked for. I didn’t have the money, so I had to steal it.” She scowled. “I don’t like stealing.”
“We don’t much,” Pike said, “don’t worry. But personally, I don’t feel many qualms about stealing from these inhuman Enforcers.”
Number One’s dark eyebrows shot up, but her expression otherwise remained the same. “They seem human enough. All this devastation is very human.”
The man, Pike, stepped closer and put his hands on either side of her waist, leaning in. “I’m human,” he said. “And you’re human too “ and sooner or later you’re going to remember it.”
She gave him a cold glare, then put both hands on his chest and pushed, sending him reeling. The slender woman was much stronger than she looked. “I’m not interested, Pike,” she said.
He shrugged, smiling affably. Maybe she wasn’t “ not yet.
“So let’s see the goods,” Pike said, leaning against the wall. Reaching inside her dark cloak, the woman brought out a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with rough twine. As he took it from her, he noted that it was heavy and that the contents felt hard and lumpy. Grinning, he unwrapped the package and took out two gorgeous necklaces, both studded with diamonds the size of coins. His grin broadened as he clapped Number One on the shoulder a bit harder than necessary.
“Hey! Good work.”
She did not smile or even bat an eye at his praise. Her voice soft and clipped, she said, “What about your side of the bargain, Pike? Do you plan on holding that up?”
He put an arm around her shoulders, squeezed. “Of course I do, sweetheart! Just come right this way.”
She extricated herself from his grip and followed two paces behind him as he again slipped through the shadows, moving quickly and silently. Number One was just as proficient as the man was at the time-honored art of sneaking around, and the two made a good pace through the deserted back alleyways. Pike was pleased more than he could say to have found such an excellent thief for his little project.
Pike barely looked around as he went, so familiar was he with the area. However, he occasionally glanced back to check that Number One was still following him; it was like being followed by a ghost. But she was always there, her hair swishing around her shoulders, her eyes hard and cold.
He stopped suddenly outside a small set of steps that led up to a back door. An overflowing trash bin stood next to the rusted railing, and some of its former contents lay scattered across the roughly-paved ground. Pike took the steps two at a time, Number One following.
“You live here?” she asked softly. “But it looks so normal!”
“And I don’t?” he said in mock affront. He rummaged in the pocket of his trousers for a key, then he unlocked the faded, peeling door and pushed it open.
He held the door for Number One, who stepped inside, peering around. Once the door was safely closed and locked, he flicked on the electric light and blinked in the sudden brightness. His companion, however, seemed unperturbed; she looked around the cellar, her eyes flicking over the furnace, the dusty old piano, the writing desk with its neatly piled papers, the three large trunks, and the large, lumpy object covered with a plaid blanket.
“What is this place?” she asked quietly, unfastening her cloak and draping it over her arm. For a moment Pike was more interested in looking at her than answering her question “ she was wearing a very pretty if very simple blue dress with a rather low-cut neck. But then he cleared his throat and gestured around.
“Welcome to the 21st Street Mission,” he said cheerily. “This place has been around for decades. Now I rent it.”
“Rent it? With what money?”
“Sharp as a tack, aren’t you, Number One? I help out here, and the lovely Mrs. Keeler gives me leave to do whatever I please in her basement, so long as I take out the trash and keep the furnace running in winter.”
The woman looked around, her eyebrows meeting. “But there is nowhere to sleep “ “
“Ah, that’s what you think,” Pike said, taking her elbow and guiding her over to the wall, which was covered with a large and ancient tapestry. Or at least, that was how it looked. He pushed aside the tapestry, and they entered another section of the basement.
She looked back at the room they had just left, then into this one. A tiny smile touched her lips. “It is larger than it seems at first,” she said.
“You have a firm grasp of the obvious.”
The small side room was filled with cots and piles and heaps of blankets. Two young men and a young woman sat in the center of all this, playing cards and arguing fiercely in hushed voices. When they noticed Pike and Number One, they stopped and looked up. Pike was watching Number One for her reaction to seeing a black girl and an Asian boy in the room, but again, she seemed totally unperturbed. That was good. There was no place for racism in his basement.
“Who’s she, sir?” asked the Asian. Pike smiled and stepped further into the room, letting the tapestry fall closed behind him.
“She’s new,” he said. “Her name’s Number One. Number One, Mr. Sulu, Mr. Scott, and Miss Uhura.”
“Trust her that much, do ye?” Scott muttered in his thick Scottish accent.
Pike clapped the thickset young man on the shoulder. “Scotty, Number One has brought us those diamonds you requested.”
Scott leaped up. “Ye did?” he demanded. “Good! Now at least we’ve a fightin’ chance!”
“A fighting chance to do what?” Number One asked.
“Sir!” the girl, Uhura, cried, her tone one of protest. “You didn’t tell her the plan?”
Pike shrugged, sitting down on a cot. “I picked her up outside the XP. She was desperate, so I offered her food and shelter if she’d get me some diamonds. Here’s the shelter, and Piper should be back soon with the food.” He took his straw hat off and tossed it neatly onto Sulu’s head. The four of them laughed, and Pike turned to Number One.
“Siddown.”
She did so, stiffly upright, and Pike repressed the urge to roll his eyes at her formality. He didn’t know much about the woman, only that she had been at the experimental facility for years. And although he wondered why “ she wasn’t a foreigner, that was for sure, and she had no obvious disabilities or differences “ he knew better than to ask. That sort of thing just wasn’t discussed.
To take his mind off the subject, Pike took out the brown paper parcel and passed it to Scott, who ripped it open eagerly. “Diamonds!” he murmured, his voice hushed, reverent. “Real diamonds! Sir, may I -- ?”
“No,” Pike said firmly. Scotty was a good kid, but he could be obsessively workaholic. “We’ll work on it tomorrow. It’s late.”
As a matter of fact, not only was the hour late, but the final member of their little group was late as well. Pike stood up and began to pace the empty space in the center of the room, his hands behind his back, glancing at the small clock they had up on the wall. “Where’s Piper?” he muttered at last. “He should have been back by now.”
“The “ the Enforcers couldn’t have captured him, sir?” Sulu ventured.
Pike shrugged. Dr. Mark Piper wasn’t the type to have been caught doing something illegal, and he wasn’t foreign. That said, the Enforcers seemed to be on the brink of passing a law against breathing. With a heavy sigh, Pike sat down again on his cot, folding his arms before him. He had to stop worrying.
There was a long silence, alleviated only by the ticking of the clock. After a moment, Uhura began to gather up the playing cards, straightening the haphazard heap into a neat pile. Number One looked from one face to the other, finally getting to her feet.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Mr. Sulu and Miss Uhura are obviously foreign. How do you live here? What did you need diamonds for? What’s all this about a fighting chance? Doesn’t your landlady know that she could be arrested for harboring foreigners? It’s not that I agree with the Enforcers; I just don’t understand.”
One by one, Scott, Sulu and Uhura looked at Pike, who sighed, trying to get more comfortable. “You’ll laugh,” he said.
“I do not laugh,” Number One stated coldly.
Pike believed her. “Okay, then. We’re trying to build a spaceship.”
“Not just any spaceship,” Scott added. “A starship. Faster-’n-light travel.”
Number One did not laugh. She said, “You are mad. Faster-than-light travel is a myth. A fairy tale.”
“It’s been done,” Sulu said.
“It was a hoax.”
“It’s been done!” Sulu repeated. “The man who did it is in a prison camp now, of course.”
Pike blinked as Number One rounded on him. “Feeding those lies to a bunch of teenagers?” she said coldly. “Giving them false hope?”
“They’re not teenagers, sweetheart,” he said. “And they’re not lies.”
“You actually believe “ ”
Pike held up a finger for silence. His head cocked, he heard a key turn in the lock, and then the door opened and closed. A moment later, the tapestry was pushed aside and a heavyset man dressed all in black entered, several large bundles in his arms.
“Piper,” Pike sighed, relieved. Then he turned to Number One. “Oh “ Number One, Dr. Mark Piper “ Doc, Number One. She’s new.”
“Fresh from the XP, eh?” Piper said, shifting the bundles to shake hands with the woman. “I’ll have to check for any residual toxins from the food. And congratulations on the escape, ma’am. We all know what it’s like in there.”
Was it Pike’s imagination, or did a shudder cross Number One’s pretty face?
“Heya, kids,” Piper said, dropping the packages on the floor and removing his hat and scarf. His careworn face broke out into a cheerful smile. “Supper.”
--
Number One sat on the edge of her cot, her head in her hands. This place, these people, were not what she had expected. For one thing, the men had insisted that she and Uhura sleep in the two cots, while they made use of the piles of blankets and sheets. Scott and Pike had even moved the cots to the other end of the room. And Dr. Piper had brought home a complete and healthy supper, though she didn’t want to think about how he had procured it.
Dressed in a castoff nightshirt far too big for her and listening to the snores of four men, Number One allowed her thoughts to drift to the “project”.
It was clear that every member of the little group believed whole-heartedly in the project. Scott had tried to explain to Piper over dinner how the first man to achieve faster-than-light travel, Zefram Cochrane, had used some kind of antimatter, channeled through a crystal. He was hoping he could achieve the same effect with magnets and diamonds. Number One had not listened closely to his theory, but whether or not it was accurate, the idea was still absurd. They lived in a basement. How did they expect to get the sheer amount of material necessary to build a craft “ any craft “ large enough to hold someone? And how did they expect to get it off the ground? Besides, there was a far more immediate concern “ the Enforcers.
Number One shuddered and lay back on her cot. She didn’t want to think about the Enforcers. Rolling over, she came face to face with Uhura, whose bright dark eyes were still open.
“Ma’am?” Uhura whispered shyly.
Number One nodded.
“I just wanted to tell you… it’ll be awfully nice to have another woman here.”
“You haven’t been hurt in any way?” Number One whispered suspiciously.
“Oh, no! Not since I came here.” Uhura lapsed into silence, turning away slightly.
Number One looked up at the ceiling. Perhaps there were worse places she could be. After all, she was comfortable and warm, and surrounded by people who hated the Enforcers.
She had long ago disassociated herself from the human race. But it was just possible that these people weren’t so bad.