Free Earth & Sky (The Earth & Sky Trilogy) by Megan Crewe Page B

genuine human being while claiming to be an alien. “You still don’t believe me,” he says.
    “I believe that you can travel through time,” I say. “I believe that someone ’s playing around with history. Why should I believe that running around in revolutionary France isn’t just more of that?”
    He opens his mouth, and closes it again. Then his face brightens. “I can show you,” he says, grabbing the cloth-computer. “I can show you how much this matters to us—how committed we are to setting Earth free.”
    He tweaks something on the lower half of the computer, and the Internet browser disappears. “Everyone who joins our group watches this recording,” he continues, a note of reverence creeping into his voice. “It’s a— I suppose you could say a mission statement. From a speech Jeanant gave a couple years before he came here to see his plan through.”
    A clear image materializes on the screen. Win swivels it back toward me.
    The recording is zoomed in on a man, catching him from the waist up, in front of a pale marbled background dotted with small indents. The angled edge of a shape I can’t quite place—but somehow looks furniture-ish—bisects the lower right corner of the image. That and the thin, seamless but ripple-textured fabric of the shirt the guy’s wearing give me the prickling sense that this could really be from another world, though the guy looks as human as Win does.
    The guy—Jeanant, this leader Win’s been talking about—appears to be no older than his midtwenties. His curly black hair drifts over the tops of his ears as he nods, the even light glowing off his bronze skin. But it’s the way he stands that fixes my gaze on him. From the straightening of his shoulders to the tilt of his head, he exudes a firm purposefulness, as if he’s exactly where he needs to be.
    Then he starts to speak, in a low voice that carries through the cloth’s invisible speakers in the choppy yet rolling syllables of what could be an alien language. After a second, a computerized English translation kicks in, its inflectionless tone blending into his voice.
    “It doesn’t matter where they were born, who their ancestors are, what’s written in their genetic code,” Jeanant says. “Every thinking, feeling conscious being deserves our respect. Every one of them deserves the chance to determine the course of his or her own life, without outside manipulation. Because no matter what some of us like to tell ourselves, they have their own minds with their own unique visions of the universe, that are just as valid and meaningful as anyone else’s.”
    He punctuates his point with a sweep of his hands.
    “Look at these people, and remember they could have been our friends,” he says. “They could be our teachers, in a far better way than we use them now. But not until we make things right and release them from what’s all but slavery. And we can. There may not be very many of us, but if we’ve learned anything from all our centuries of study, it’s that a small group can make a difference. Again and again, across innumerable points of data, we’ve seen it happen. Every one of us in this room is valid and deserving too, and, working together, we can become something powerful. If we have the courage to take that chance, to question those who would keep us locked in the same old patterns, we can become something so incredible that we’ll set all our lives on a completely different course—one we can be proud of. Can anyone here think of a better goal than that?”
    His words reverberate through me. No , I think. That’s what I’ve wanted more than anything, for as long as I can remember: to be powerful enough to fix all the inexplicable wrongs around me. To set my life on a new course without them.
    The recording freezes in place. I manage to tear my eyes away. Win’s staring at the screen as if Jeanant’s speech has struck him just as deeply. I guess if there’s any guy you’d follow