Ibyabek Read online

  Ibyabek

  by Hannah Blume (as Alicorn)

  Kyeo held down the low harmony to the Anthem of the Bright Way by himself during passing period. The other two boys who knew the harmony and had the range for it, Saro and Irabe, were paired, and staying back at the teacher’s request to clarify the answers they’d given on part of the test. Or that one of them had, anyway; there was no way for Kyeo to tell which one. Though he could guess. Saro couldn’t stop asking for comparisons to other planets’ philosophies, when other planets didn’t have real philosophies, they were just soulless disorganized pits hardly anyone could afford to live well in. Still, maybe Irabe had written something dumb on his exam.

  Everyone else in Merit Class 1 jogged to lunch, singing, most on the melody, Mar and Soh on high harmony. When he’d first been assigned to Soh, Kyeo had taught him the third part to that and a few other songs, though he’d had to demonstrate the tenor parts an octave down. Soh had gotten only a little music in primary school, not enough to pick up harmony parts but enough to learn them when taught.

  They didn’t study music any more in secondary school. They’d just come from Philosophy, studied much more intensively now that they were teenagers and could absorb difficult concepts a little boy would struggle with. After lunch would be military prep, Kyeo’s favorite in the absence of a music slot.

  The bread at lunch was only a day old, if Kyeo was any judge, probably baked the evening before. His mother used to make fresh bread, when she could get yeast, and they’d eat it still hot, but of course it was not efficient for the kitchens to make enough bread for hundreds of students in time for lunch every morning, particularly not when many of the workers in the kitchen were students themselves and needed to attend classes in the morning and afternoon and were only available after supper. The vegetables served alongside the bread were floating in a thin soup.

  Kyeo saw a lot of sorrel in his bowl. When he’d been a child, still going home from school every day to his mother’s cooking and more spoiled, he’d traded away his sorrel for cabbage whenever possible. But he wasn’t going to ask Soh about that. Soh was already having enough trouble growing into the mature equanimity that Ibyabek expected of its men. Though he did well enough in school to be part of Merit Class 1, he complained, muttering to himself or even to Kyeo and their other friends about landscaping duty or cleaning duty or kitchen duty. Sometimes he complained about other things, too. If he couldn’t rein it in he wasn’t going to go on to a good career, and then he’d have a lot more to complain about and a lot less leeway to write it off as youthful silliness.

  Kyeo ate his sorrel. He was getting used to it, just like his father always said he would whenever he stopped avoiding it.

  “They’ve been serving us this same soup for a week,” said Soh.

  The vegetables had come in soup form for a week, but that wasn’t uncommon. “The soup is good,” said Kyeo firmly when he’d swallowed his mouthful of sorrel. “If the vegetables were very plentiful a week ago of course it will take some time to eat them all, but they make the soup fresh.” Kyeo hadn’t had kitchen duty in a month, but it hardly mattered either way.

  “I keep finding broccoli in it,” said Soh. “There’s never broccoli except the one time, there’s no way they got more broccoli every day for a week. It’s the same, they made a very big batch. They don’t want to make new soup on our last days.”

  “If there’s broccoli that means there’s plenty of broccoli. Don’t talk nonsense,” said Kyeo.

  Soh shut up and ate his soup, mostly by soaking it up with his bread. The rest of the lunch conversation was about how Garhan needed to stop elbowing people while playing ball. Garhan sheepishly agreed he would try harder. Saro and Irabe caught up and had to bolt down their lunches in just four minutes.

  They went to Military Prep after they were all finished with their meals, and when three steps had passed without anyone starting up a song, Kyeo sang the opening line of Sunrise on Ibyabek. “Our Ibyabek, which cares for every one of its children in our brightest way…” Everyone’s gait fell into the beat as the other boys joined in.

  * * *

  Since it was the last day of term, all the classes were exams. Philosophy had the hardest tests, but Military Prep was grueling even with the physical exercise portion separated into gym; it had an extra long block in the day to accommodate the gigantic paper test, and time for some students to take their test orally in much less time with the teacher or teaching assistant one at a time. “It’s a problem with the printer,” Kyeo said to Chavyuo on their way out of the classroom. Chavyuo had been one of the unlucky boys who hadn’t gotten a paper copy and was trembling a little, like he always did when afraid he’d performed poorly on an exam.

  “I know that,” said Chavyuo. “Last term we had those electronic tablets. Those worked well as long as the teachers remembered to charge them while the power was on. Where did they go?”

  Kyeo shrugged. Soh opined, “Teacher Salgun sold them on the black market.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Kyeo. Teacher Salgun had all the hallmarks of a black marketeer, from the smell of coffee wafting from his thermos to the suspicious shine of his shoes, but accusing him of stealing from the school was too far for Soh to get away with. “It isn’t true.” It could have been something else. Maybe all the tablets broke, or they were needed for another school, though since Bright City was the most important city on Ibyabek and their school Academy of Merit was the best secondary school in Bright City Kyeo wasn’t sure who else would be better recipients of the tablets.

  They had two more exams before supper. The foreign language test on Kularan Creole was proctored by the teaching assistant. Kyeo wasn’t sure what had happened to the teacher, a real citizen of United Kular who had been brought to Ibyabek to instruct the students in her mother tongue. She was the only female teacher Kyeo had ever had, although he understood it to be common in Kular for women to have careers of their own, if they were unable to find husbands due to the general dissolution of the male population. There was nothing else they could do, since nothing in Kular was distributed freely and they had no choice but to work to support themselves. Kyeo wasn’t clear if Teacher Sujan was being paid by the Ibyabekan government to teach her language or not. It seemed like it would be vulgar for them to do so, and she got to sleep in the teacher dormitories like the Ibyabekan teachers did, and eat with everyone else in the cafeteria, so maybe she was here for that reason.

  At any rate, he felt that he had done well on his Kularan test. He wasn’t as good as Soh was at remembering what all the grammatical complications were called (Kularan was a really terribly elaborate language, and Kyeo had heard that Ibyabekan was gaining popularity there because it was so logical and easy to pick up, not to mention beautifully pronounced). But he was good at actually speaking it fluently, and the teaching assistant had apparently used limited printer access to get one vocabulary section printed for everyone and then rendered the rest of the test as conversation in Kularan.

  Maybe Teacher Sujan had done something wrong and was in trouble. But there was no point in guessing.

  Gym ended the day, to work up their appetites for dinner. The exam resembled a normal class, except they didn’t get to play ball and there was less shouted encouragement from the teacher when they fell behind their goals at running laps and lifting weights and clambering through the obstacle course that was supposed to be similar to the inside of a military spaceship that had taken damage.

  They showered. The water was cold this time, which Kyeo didn’t really object to amid cries of disappointment from the others. To his mind it was less awkward for everyone to equally be the target of giggles about shrunken genitals from the chill than for all the mockery to disproportionately fall on whoever had a badly time
d erection for no reason, often him.

  They didn’t linger, not in cold water. Five minutes to get the sweat off and apply and remove some desultory soap and they could get into their day clothes and go eat.

  The bread was a little staler at dinner than lunch. The soup was the same. There was a piece of broccoli in Kyeo’s bowl, floating in the middle. Soh gave him a sidelong look. Kyeo kicked him in the ankle, just lightly, and concentrated on making himself eat his sorrel.

  * * *

  After dinner Kyeo brought Soh with him to Teacher Salgun’s office. Soh whined and dragged his feet - he was exhausted from gym class and wanted to lie down for a bit - but sometimes Teacher Salgun would share a bit of chocolate, which didn’t grow on Ibyabek and was probably disloyal to like but was certainly very compelling to a certain sort of person. Kyeo didn’t want to go anywhere alone. It looked suspicious, and furthermore neglected his duty to keep an eye on Soh. So he hauled Soh along with him and went to Teacher Salgun and asked, “May I borrow your phone and call my father?”

  There was a free phone line that any student could use on campus, which he could have walked over to the minders’ office hallway to use, but it usually didn’t work when Kyeo tried it, and he’d stopped bothering to check as long as Teacher Salgun with his cell phone was around. Teacher Salgun’s cellphone was only three years old and worked nearly every time, though it was still possible that Kyeo’s father wouldn’t be available to answer it on his own cell phone. Kyeo had a very important father, Suor Sebe Luk, who was often in meetings with other very important people, sometimes even people who knew and personally relayed the will of the Glorious Leader Lut Naar Am. Kyeo’s mother did not have a phone, and neither did his sister, but Suor could relay messages, when there were any - once he had even been able to put Kyeo’s mother on the phone when he’d happened to be home sick during the call. Kyeo’s older sister Aipen had married several years before and if her husband had a phone number Kyeo didn’t know it, so he hadn’t heard from her since the wedding, but he had a photo of her smiling with her hair pinned up the day she’d married.

  This time, when Teacher Salgun handed over his phone and took Kyeo’s two kal bill, and Kyeo dialed, Suor picked up. “This is Coordinator Suor Sebe Luk,” he said.

  “Father, it’s me,” said Kyeo.

  “Kyeo! Why are you calling? I’ll be seeing you tomorrow!”

  Kyeo blinked. “Really?”

  “They haven’t told you yet, I see. Yes, tomorrow you’re coming home, I requested you and the Distributor agreed. I have some work for you to do with me in my office.”

  Kyeo had been expecting to spend the school break working - well, apparently he would be working, but he’d been expecting to make bricks or get placed on a farm, to repay Ibyabek for his care and education all given him for free. “That’s wonderful, Father! Thank you so much.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when I pick you up tomorrow.”

  “You’re coming to pick me up yourself?”

  “Yes, be out waiting by the gate right after your breakfast, I’ll expect you. It’s very delicate work, you’ll need to be sharp.”

  “Yes Father,” said Kyeo, “of course, Father.”

  “I have to hang up now, things are busy here. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yes Father,” Kyeo repeated, and he ended the call and handed the phone back to Teacher Salgun. “Thank you, Teacher.”

  “Anytime, Kyeo,” the teacher replied, waving him and Soh out of the office.

  Soh, sour about not having received a chocolate, grumbled on their way back to the dorm. “You get a work detail at home with your family! I’m on paving.”

  “You like paving,” Kyeo said.

  “I like it more than I like landscaping. If they have me driving the machine. I’d rather be doing science, though.”

  “You’ll get to do science if science is where you can do the best work for Ibyabek,” recited Kyeo.

  Soh visibly repressed a grumble. “I do well in science!”

  “We aren’t out of school yet. Strong young bodies are what we have to offer while we work on developing our minds.” Kyeo wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation; when talking to Soh he frequently fell back on directly quoting their philosophy teacher.

  “Easy for you to say, working with your father,” Soh said.

  “I said it last break too.”

  Soh didn’t answer. Since it was the last day, there was no homework, only packing. Kyeo folded all his uniforms into the string bag he used for luggage, left his textbooks out in the hallway where they’d be collected for the next people to enter his class level while he was issued new ones, and went to bed early so he could be ready for his father.

  * * *

  It was a beautiful day, sunny with only a few wisps of cloud unspooled across the sky. Kyeo received his work assignment formally with his breakfast (porridge, served cold today for some reason) - the worker who put it in front of him, a student from a junior class, recited it for him. He looked tired; he must have been up late memorizing which assignments went to which students. This might have worried Kyeo if he’d been told he was supposed to go work in a water treatment plant but he got the news he expected.

  As soon as he’d eaten his porridge, Kyeo said goodbye to all his friends and collected his bag from his room, checking in the crack-edged mirror in the communal bathroom that his hair was combed so Suor wouldn’t scold him. He tucked a strand back into place and hurried out.

  He waited inside the gate but in clear view of it; the boys guarding the gate looked at his name tag and nodded to each other, expecting him.

  There wasn’t a bench, or even a retaining wall to sit on, so Kyeo stood, trying not to look like he was imitating the guards lest it seem mocking or suspicious. He’d been on guard duty before, but the posture didn’t come naturally to him, so he wasn’t likely to accidentally line up with them if he paid any attention.

  Father arrived in the back of a black car when it would have almost been lunchtime, had Kyeo been staying on campus during the school break for a work rotation. The guards let Kyeo out when they looked at the paperwork the driver showed them through the bars, and Kyeo slipped into the near seat and beamed at his father, who clapped him on the back.

  “Your grades are good,” Suor commented.

  There was no correct response there - Suor didn’t like to be thanked for stating facts like that - so Kyeo ducked his head and smiled. “It’s good to see you,” he said.

  “You’ll be home for the entire break - possibly longer. The new ambassador from United Kular has brought his family, and his son is your age. I need you to serve as a minder for him. A little like a school pairmate.”

  Kyeo was silent for a second. This was an intimidating job, one where not just a team he was on, but he alone, might wind up responsible for things of importance to Ibyabek. An ambassador’s son could know nothing, could say nothing, he might just want to play sports all day. But he might say things that Kyeo would have to report, and be discreet about collecting for those reports lest the other boy clam up. Or he could have ideas of sabotaging Ibyabek and its institutions, the way foreign entrants were sometimes caught doing. Kyeo’s job could either be a guard duty assignment - waiting for nothing to happen - or a critical intelligence mission.

  “Yes Father,” Kyeo said when he’d had a moment to digest this.

  The car bumped over a pothole and Kyeo grabbed the handle sewn to the roof of the car to stabilize himself on the ragged section of pavement.

  “You’ll be introduced tonight,” said Suor. “I couldn’t put it off any longer but fortunately did not have to pull you out of school early. They have been on the planet for two days now, but have spent the time confined to their residence apart from the ambassador’s meetings. Now that you are available to keep an eye on the boy the wife’s minder will be able to escort her out of the house occasionally too. I want you to stick close to the boy’s mother and her minder at first, but yo
u will be able to take him on some tours alone later.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You haven’t been to any parties like tonight’s. Very important people will be there. Not the Glorious Leader, but a lot of people close to him, several foreigners apart from the ambassador and his wife and child, many people with good connections and good families. You will need to be on your absolute best behavior, and get to know the Kularan boy at the same time.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Sarham Peng.” Kyeo waited for a third name before remembering that Kularans didn’t use clan names to subdivide surnames, the way his family was Sebe Luk but there were also Tohek Luk and Redae Luk and Suwang Luk and other Luk families. “The ambassador is Wulaar Peng, and his wife is Umi Peng. Do you have that memorized?”

  “Sarham Peng is my pairmate, his parents are Wulaar and Umi Peng,” repeated Kyeo.

  “Good,” said Suor.

  “How is Mother?” asked Kyeo. He wanted to ask about Aipen too, but his father might not have any news of her, and it was probably better not to draw attention to questions that couldn’t be answered. If Suor knew how his daughter was doing he’d probably volunteer that on his own and Kyeo wouldn’t need to ask.

  “Your mother’s recovering from that problem she had with her foot quite well,” Suor replied. “She can walk without crutches for a few minutes every day, so those will be returned to the hospital soon. The garden’s thriving, she can do most of that sitting down.”

  “Oh, good,” Kyeo said. “It will be good to see her.”

  “You’ll see her, but you need to stick to the Peng boy like glue,” cautioned Suor. “You might have to be up early and home late. If he invites you to stay the night in the house they’re being provided, you accept.”

  “Yes Father.”

  “Most likely he will not make such an invitation right after meeting you, but try to make a good impression at the party.”

  “Of course.”