The Light Blue Jumper Read online

  The Light Blue Jumper

  by Sidra. F. Sheikh

  For:

  Ami and Abuji, who always told me to reach for the stars.

  Of course, I took it literally.

  Zooni, who read every draft, whether he wanted to or not.

  Deena and Alana, who have yet to learn how to read.

  First published in paperback in Pakistan in 2017 by Mongrel Books.

  Copyright@ Sidra F. Sheikh

  Sidra F. Sheikh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Mongrel Books

  P.O.Box 12224

  Karachi

  Pakistan

  www.mongrelbooks.pub

  E-ISBN: 978-969-7701-06-3

  Book design and typesetting by Aziza Ahmad

  Contents

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

  9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

  17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

  25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

  33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

  41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

  49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

  57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

  65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

  73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

  81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

  89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

  97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

  105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

  Epilogue

  Prologue - Lieutenant Salaar

  Just one more sweep. I knew Zaaron had to be here somewhere. The stray transmission picked up by Central Command had pointed to this quadrant. Zaaron’s coordinates had been wiped off the face of every map by the Interplanetary Forces (IPF), but the planet had not ceased to exist. It was the hub of all IPF weapons development activity, the seat from which they ruled the Universe.

  “We are in grave danger here, Salaar,” Madam warned. “It’s surprising we haven’t been picked up by the planet’s defence systems already, if we are as close as you think.”

  “Just give me time for one more look, Madam.” I hated the plea in my voice.

  “We will find another way,” Madam patted my shoulder kindly as she made to engage hyperdrive. “The sooner we leave this quadrant, the better,” she said with finality as the countdown started.

  I closed my eyes in silent prayer, hoping we would just crash into the damned place, if it was so well hidden. My eyes snapped open as the First Light ground to a jarring, screaming halt, throwing me against the console. Apparently my prayers had been answered. Either that or I had brought down the wrath of the ship’s Central Command by voicing my celestial entreaties aloud.

  1. The Zaaronian

  I met him quite by chance. If his spaceship hadn’t collided with ours, I would have never made his acquaintance. He was a funny-looking fellow by all standards: big droopy brown eyes, a thin aquiline nose, and large pouty lips framing two rows of very white teeth. His skin wasn’t a regular light blue or alabaster, instead it was gold; there was really no other way of describing it. The assault on my senses didn’t end there though. All I had to do was look in his general direction and there it was, a big mop of wavy brown hair growing out of his head, framing his slightly long oval face. Looking at the poor ugly fellow sent a shudder right through me, so I decided to look around the small room instead. I appeared to be in someone’s quarters. There was a folding cot in one corner, with a small round steel table and four chairs, on one of which I had been seated. My companion was seated opposite me. He wore white pants, a white jacket, a peaked cap with a silver fist insignia, and silver moon boots instead of the customary black IPF military uniform with gold buttons on the jacket and a peaked cap with a warship emblazoned on it in gold. The floor, walls, ceiling, everything was brilliant white instead of black and gold, which was the standard IPF design. I wondered if the ship might be part of the new stealth fleet I had heard rumblings about.

  “Are you hurt?” he kept asking.

  “No, I am all right,” I said finally, after checking all four feet of me for signs of any trauma. I seemed to have escaped unhurt for the most part. I settled my gaze on a distant spot near the ceiling so that I could be as polite as possible about my aversion to my new friend’s looks. All that hair was making my stomach churn.

  “Where were you headed?”

  “I was going to Zaaron.” Considering they had crashed into us as we were preparing to land, there wasn’t much mystery there. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to be on my way now, if you could just direct me to the nearest exit,” I said, rising from my seat.

  “Going home?” he asked, pointing rather insistently at the chair I had vacated.

  “Going to work,” I corrected, perching on the edge of the chair. “I work on Zaaron, like everyone else. Since the Great Liberation all work is in the Free World.”

  “And Zaaron is a part of the Free World, right, so where do you live then?”

  “I live in G-125. That’s a right turn straight after you exit the Free World and about two light hours down Route 125,” I explained, staring at my chosen spot.

  “So, do I understand this correctly, no one lives on Zaaron, it’s only a work hub?”

  “Of course someone lives on Zaaron! It’s a perfectly acceptable planet. I meant, we the natives don’t live there,” I informed him. “Wonderful talking to you, we must do this again some time, do drop by to exchange pleasantries soon,” I said as I moved towards a random wall. It was very difficult to make out the door in all that white.

  He sprang from his seat and barred my way, placing a firm hand on my shoulder and propelling me back towards the chair. I was beginning to think the poor fellow was desperate for company. It must be a lonely job flying stealthily around space, collecting secrets for the IPF. I tried to gather my thoughts so that I could extract myself from this forced conversation, but he was still talking, which interfered significantly with my attempts.

  “I see,” he said. “I’ll get right to the point here. How exactly did you manage to lose your home planet?”

  He actually seemed incredulous. What a strange, nosy, impertinent creature. Why was he asking me as if I had personally misplaced Zaaron somewhere? It was a totally unacceptable line of conversation, I thought, but when he continued to stare at me expectantly, my good manners got the better of me and I felt compelled to be polite, so I explained as simply as I could. “There were a few of them at first, a trickle of refugees who settled in far-flung outposts where no one wanted to go. We had lived in peace with the Warrawns for centuries, so the general feeling was that a few more wouldn’t hurt. Yet the ones who came later were different.” I paused for effect, but decided to hurry it along when I noticed another question forming on his oversized lips. “They kept to themselves and were seldom seen outside their heavily fortified homes. The amassing of weapons was probably a bad sign, now that I think about it,” I mused.

  “I would have to agree with you there,” he interrupted.

  “Their home planet had been destroyed by the Mawrons, so the remnants of the Warrawns straggled in from all parts of the galaxy, smelling of fear and desperation; another reason for us to maintain our distance,” I added, now a little defensive. “The trickle turned into wave after wave as all that was left of Warrawnia converged on Zaaron, aided by the IPF.”

  “Thanks for the history lesson,” he smiled wryly. “Go on.”

  “Inch by inch, day by day, they colonised Zaaron, until the day of the Great Liberation. That day Zaaron became truly theirs and we were rounded up and shipped off to special settlements for the
greater good,” I concluded sheepishly, wilting a little under his piercing gaze.

  “You didn’t try and stop them, through all this?” he asked in disbelief.

  “We tried to resist…” I snatched a quick look to see the smirk on his ridiculous lips. I qualified my statement in response. “A little bit, in the early days. However, we soon realised that a little resistance was definitely not enough, so we abandoned the thought altogether,” I finished with a flourish.

  He seemed unimpressed by my seamless logic so I continued with my story, feeling the sudden urge to convince the poor brute. “Life is not bad. We have a place to live. We have a place to work. Things could have been much worse; we could have been unemployed and homeless.”

  “Or dead,” he added helpfully.

  “Yes, that too. We are safe where we are now. Each family has a tiny little space all to themselves,” I told him. “I really must go, I have urgent business on Zaaron,” I said, gingerly pushing back my chair.

  He was now staring at me intently which made me pause mid-scrape. “Before you leave, I was hoping we could discuss something else. What do you know of the madness on G-125? Tell me absolutely everything,” he insisted.

  “There is no madness on G-125; that was just an ugly rumour,” I reassured him, pretending I hadn’t moved. I couldn’t believe the rumour about the madness had travelled so far abroad that even the lonely occupants of stealth spaceships had heard of it.

  “Let’s just discuss the rumour then. Tell me everything about the events leading up to it.”

  My host was not one to give up easily but I had simply had enough. “Some other time, to be sure,” I told him sincerely, searching desperately for any indication of a door.

  “I’m afraid this discussion can’t wait,” he said, placing his forearms on the table and leaning forward, eyes boring into me.

  “Shouldn’t you be on duty right now? I don’t mean to be pedantic but shouldn’t you be pursuing some lead or gathering some intel or whatever it is that you do on secret missions?” I could see I had caught him off guard with my question. He was trying to rearrange his surprised features into a mask of unconcern. “Your secret is safe with me,” I told him sincerely. “After all, we work for the same cause.”

  “That is good to know, which cause is that exactly?”

  “The IPF of course,” I caught myself whispering, for some odd reason.

  “Yes, of course,” he said emphatically, “which is why we really must finish this conversation.” He nodded gravely at me in conclusion, making no attempt to honour my request.

  Perhaps this entire exchange was part of his mission. Zaaronian ancient history was largely unwritten and remained with only a few of the older families, while recent events were so confusing, that absolutely no one could decipher them, except a highly intelligent native from an old family. I resolved to be as helpful as I could in view of my natural advantage of birth and intellect. “Nobody can say for sure what caused the madness or when it started. If we could, I suppose we would have put a stop to it,” I resumed magnanimously.

  “When did it start?”

  “I just said nobody knows that.”

  “Oh, I thought that was just a figure of speech. How about telling me what you remember, from the beginning?”

  “All I can recall is that one fateful Sunday, many years ago, we had gathered for a wedding ceremony in the neighbourhood, when we heard the roar of engines overhead. The roar soon turned into blast after blast of deafening gunfire as IPF remote fighter craft flew overhead and bombed the apartment block one street away. Everyone in and around the building was killed. The building itself, Block 1, was just a smoking pile of rubble.

  We had a lot of questions, but anyone who could have answered them was either dead or celebrating at the IPF Headquarters. Completely at a loss, we decided to keep our heads down and pretend nothing had happened, which I find is really helpful in such situations. I showered in the morning and got to work extra early the next day, working my shift without as much as a shadow of a frown. After much thought, I had narrowed the cause of the untimely demise of Block 1 down to being one of two things: the dictates of destiny or a completely random occurrence. Either way, there was nothing we could do about it.”

  He seemed at a loss for words, engrossed in some far-off thought. Seeing the opportunity to extricate myself, I cleared my throat and he looked up. “What happened next? Tell me every little insignificant detail,” he said.

  I gathered my thoughts with a sigh. “I got back late from work the next day, I went straight home and had dinner with my family. My wife had made chickpea curry with rice; she likes to serve exotic food. It was a little too spicy so I mixed some yogurt with it. We argued about something. I think she was angry because I had made an insensitive comment about her weight and her hair, possibly her skin as well. If I can recall correctly, her teeth had also become borderline offensive. She looked grotesque; shiny white teeth, glowing skin, wavy brown hair and a slim tall body. She was looking a lot like you, now that I think about it. It was the effect of a stupid detox program she had picked up from an irresponsible space broadcast.”

  “I take it she is not from Zaaron,” he said mildly.

  “No, no. Lucky girl, she was genetically matched with me from an inferior subplanet on the outer rims. I forget the name. Anyway, I glanced out of the window whilst eating and saw lights near the bombsite. There appeared to be some activity so I jumped up from my chair and ran to the window to get a better look, and saw that a small crowd had already gathered near the rubble. I gladly left my meal and my conversation incomplete and made my way across the street.

  What I saw next was as frightening as it was heartening. There were people crawling out of the rubble. Survivors! One at a time they made their way to the surface, some with gruesome injuries and others covered in a layer of dust, but otherwise intact. We rushed them to the nearest emergency room. There was only first aid available in the G-Sectors; the hospitals were all a shuttle ride away in the Free World.

  We knew that we would have to process the paperwork for an air ambulance request and landing permit, which was expected to take a while. However, to our great surprise and relief, an IPF medical shuttle arrived within minutes of their appearance and carried them away to the Free World for treatment,” I said, drawing a long breath.

  “What happened to the survivors?” he asked with interest.

  “Unfortunately, they did not survive,” I told him sadly.

  “You may continue with your story,” he directed.

  “I returned home and ate with gusto what was left of my meal. I even paid my wife a compliment. It was a night that imbued us, on G-125, with a strange sense of calm. We, as second-class citizens of the Free World, were being well looked after. The first sign of trouble and there they were, ready to help us. We, as residents of G-125, had collectively resigned ourselves to the notion that the sudden demise of Block 1 was probably an isolated incident and quite likely well-deserved. There were whispers afterwards of miscreants or rebels as they prefer to call themselves, hiding in the vicinity of Block 1,” I told him in a hushed voice. “To our great relief, the IPF had obviously realised the danger they represented and acted immediately and decisively. We slept easy that night, safe in the knowledge that we were out of harm’s way.”

  I looked up to see that he was about to say something, but apparently thought better of it and was patiently waiting for me to continue, so I added, “It was some time later that rumours of sightings started. Space travellers swore that they had been accosted by violent Zaaronian troops carrying weapons and using foul language, although we have never in the entire history of our race indulged in violence or bad behaviour or been part of an army for that matter.” I had coloured slightly by the end of my unfortunate and shameful story but he was still looking at me expectantly. If he thinks I’m going to repeat my story, he’s mistaken, I thought defiantly, even if we are on the same team and I am trying to help him. We
are a reticent people and making us tell long stories to strangers was used as a form of torture against us in the early space wars. We hate long stories in general and the telling of them in particular.

  “Did it happen to you?” he asked cryptically.

  “Did what happen to me?” I was utterly confused.

  “The same thing that happened to the residents of Block 1,” he said it as if it was obvious.

  “No, certainly not!” I said indignantly. “Unless you were asking about the bombing this morning. Then, my answer to that question would be an emphatic yes.”

  He heaved an exasperated sigh. “What exactly happened to you?”

  “When?”

  “Oh, for goodness sake! What happened to you this morning? You nincompoop!”

  “I survived,” I stammered in response. Shouting was another method of torture used against us in the early space wars. We are a very polite, quiet folk. Any form of verbal abuse is anathema to us.

  “Stop! You’re scaring the poor devil!” My rescuer was mesmerizing. She seemed to be of roughly the same height and width, probably about three feet all around, a lovely circular being. She did have a halo of black hair around her head, but I was willing to overlook the slight imperfection in her case. Round tortoiseshell glasses were perched on her little pug nose, through which she positively radiated disapproval towards my tormentor.

  “I will continue the interrogation from here,” she said imperiously, as she closed the door behind her, which promptly blended into the wall again.

  “My pleasure,” he told her as he made his way to the hidden door. “This is Madam X. Shout if you need help,” he threw over his shoulder at me as he walked out, leaving a blank wall behind him. The goddess simply rolled her eyes at his retreating figure and focused her attention on me.