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  It was lights-out. Gori imposed a strict bedtime that hadn't been altered much since the two were infants. Because the schoolhouse was built to accommodate one Tallest child and it would be too much to ask for one of the nurses to share space instead, Teir and Sorun shared the bedroom. Granted, it was a very large bedroom; oval, with huge metal arches going from the floor to the peaked ceiling, interspaced with large triangular windows looking out at the playground. At night, after the nurses were well away, the two boys usually unshuttered the windows to let in the dim moon light, casting a bluish tint on the violet metal floor.

  The two beds had changed position several times over the years, depending on how well Sorun and Teir were getting along. During the second year when Teir had nearly gnawed off his brethren's arm the nurses had had the beds moved to opposite sides of the room and erected a force field to keep the two separated. Nowadays, when things were more relaxed, the beds were about ten feet apart in the middle of the floor with a nightstand between them.

  They could be called beds only because the Irkens had never quite gotten accustomed to calling them "hard cushiony things set in a metal box with soundboxes emitting sonic waves to induce unconsciousness." No one got into one expecting it to be soft and luxurious; they'd probably be offended if it turned out that way. It was something to do with an old warrior tradition no one had bothered discarding.

  In his bed, Sorun was asleep, curled up on his side with his antennae resting limply by his head. Sorun could almost always get to sleep with no effort whatsoever, something Teir seriously envied on the nights he lay restlessly staring at nothing and thinking of far too much.

  Tonight was one of those nights. The difference being that, for once, the thinking led to something. And Teir'd been surprised that it had all ended up as a little bit of careful geometry and applied physics. Any newborn could've figured it.

  He sat up in bed silently, glanced once at the sleeping figure in the bed ten feet from his right, and hopped over the side. His bare feet landed soundlessly on the cold metal floor. Teir covered the distance between the two beds in haste but with care, and, with his two-fingered hands resting on the silvery edge of the bed's box, leaned over to speak close to Sorun.

  "Wake up." It was the sort of whispered command that doesn't succeed in being quiet in the slightest. Sorun's right antenna twitched, but he made no other movement. Teir frowned and tried again, more forcefully. "Wake up, Sorun."

  When there was still no response Teir knew what he'd have to resort to now, and bit his lip at the thought of it. But nevertheless, the purple-eyed Irken moved one slender hand up and, very cautiously, placed a finger very gently on Sorun's head.

  The Irkens are not a race accustomed to touch unless when absolutely necessary, usually in the case of throttling an opponent to death. In the few times that Sorun and Teir had come in contact with each other in the past it was usually with the intention of leaving as much damage as possible. But this was just... a touch.

  Sorun stirred, rust-red eyes fluttering open. He blinked a few times and turned his head to meet Teir's eyes, which gleamed a milky light purple in the moonlight. His lips parted to speak, but another touch with the other finger kept him silent.

  "Come on. I've got something to show you."

  Sorun hated being led. Teir hated it also. It was one of their many similar qualities. But now, still seeming half asleep, Sorun rose from bed and obediently trailed after Teir across the floor to one of the enormous picture windows. He watched dazedly as the purple Irken pushed something into the keypad by the glass pane. Once it was entered there was a soft beep. Then, to Sorun's amazement as he rose from the zoned state, the glass pane shifted slowly outward. It was on hinges.

  The outside air rushed in, and Sorun gasped. Teir coughed a little. The pollution made the air outside their contained schoolhouse not among the most pleasant things to inhale. A night wind rustled the grass by the windows edge. Sorun could recall grass sounding like that as only a vague memory.

  It had been years since they'd been allowed in the playground. The head of exercise had taken to conducting all their sessions indoors as it became clear that the "fresh outdoor air" was actually damaging their lungs. As is the natural response for any child seeing something being taken away for their own good, Teir and Sorun just wanted to go out to the playground even more then. So the doorway leading out to it had been blocked.

  The playground was very small, only about fifty square feet. The grass was overgrown and had dominated the plastic fort that resided in the west corner. The most crucial point was that the playground was surrounded on all sides by very imposing walls.

  Walls that were, Teir had determined, twelve feet tall, and both he and Sorun were over six feet each now.

  He beckoned the red-eyed Irken to the eastern wall. He explained the process to Sorun briefly, and then laced his hands together and got into a bracing stance. Sorun nodded and used the foothold to propel himself halfway up the wall, and then with his long arms swooped up and caught the edge. The boy pulled himself up, tearing at his special academy garments in the process, then leaned back over to grab his waiting twin by the wrists. He wished to Mother he'd been born with some damn opposable thumbs.

  Eventually both Tallest candidates stood side by side on the wide top of the wall. They looked out over the city beyond them. A short breeze ran through their antennae and white overcoats. The air was greasy and disgusting but it was a beautiful thing-- oh, what a beautiful thing...

  "Sorun," Teir whispered, voice laced with pride, "we've never been outside the school before."

  "No," his companion agreed.

  The two grinned.

  "This is gonna be great," Sorun said, and dived forward.
 
 

  You couldn't call the city silent because it wasn't. It was alive and loud in all ways except the one Sorun and Teir would have considered the most crucial: there were no people. A few droids whirred across the empty pavements. Lamps hummed noisily overhead to cast a sickly yellow glow on everything. Empty taxis with their robot drivers coasted desolate streets.

  Sorun found himself thinking the kind of thoughts a person always starts thinking at this point, as much out of sheer boredom as any sort of paranoid mind. He wondered vaguely if this was indeed a dead city, and that he, Teir and the nurses in their contained little schoolhouse on the outskirts were the only ones alive in the entire district, nay, the world.

  Eventually he would have reasoned that this couldn't be because of the occasional visitors the schoolhouse got from the palace, the telescreens depicting Tallest Rarg at official speeches, and the sounds he heard the city make during the day. Eventually. But another sort of reasoning dispelled his paranoia first, and it was the sight of another person.

  He was only able to briefly consider how utterly stupid it was to be out in a city when you were a Tallest-to-be when the Irken turned the corner. He was a very short Irken, only suitable for military or some very low-level technical class, possibly a robotics repairman. The Irken was very pale and had antennae that seemed in a constant state of alertness, nearly standing vertical on its thin head. He carried an overfull paper bag nearly as large as himself.

  Sorun had just begun wondering if he ought to hide when a two-fingered hand grabbed him by the collar of his overcoat and drew him back against a wall by his brethren. Teir's hand then held itself over Sorun's chest to keep him where he stood.

  The possibly-a-repairman Irken's bag was so tall that it covered his eyes, and he seemed to be relying on familiarity with his surroundings to guide him wherever he was going. He passed by the two tall boys without seeing them at all, or even indicating that he had felt their movement. The repairman kept walking until he was about ten feet past where Sorun and Teir stood.

  And stopped.

  Turned around. Lowered the bag so that it nearly touched the ground.

  And stared.

  When you are a society that places sociological importance on height, certain behaviors are acquired by the society's citizens. Among these is the manifestation of the belief that height equates power, real and supernatural. Eventually the Tallest is no longer perceived as a civic leader but the omniscient, omnipotent god of the world, even if the society is officially past all that religion nonsense.

  So what this lowly might-be-a-repairman Irken saw, in essence, were a pair of gods standing by the wall ten feet from him, watching him with a mix of curiosity and worry. It probably didn't help that both were wearing unusual white garments that had never seen the rigors of any sort of daily work routine, and that bore an un-Irkly glow under the street lights.

  The small Irken dropped the bag and ran.

  Sorun stepped forward, alarmed. "Wait! We didn't mean to sca--"

  "I don't think he'd care what we meant," said Teir briskly, moving away from the wall. "No use in worrying over it, though. He was short."

  "Yeah, true, but... Say," said the red-eyed boy, antennae perking up. He peered at the discarded paper bag with its scattered contents. "What's this?"

  The two Irkens neared it, probably a little less cautiously than they should have. The things looked highly suspicious, oddly-shaped with bright and colorful packaging. Plastic packaging. What sort of things were stored in plastic these days?

  But for all the cheery colorful things surrounding their feet, Teir's eyes caught a small slip of paper among the packages. He picked it up and concerned himself with reading it while Sorun began opening things.

  "I can hardly read this," said Teir, to no one specifically. "It's vernacular. Sut hardly taught us how to read it. She said it was fifth-year stuff..."

  Sorun's thin fingers fumbled with a small black package. He squinted at the lettering. It wasn't in the common script like Teir's paper, but it was an unfamiliar word. It sounded alien in his head, and all he could think of to try to make it seem less so was by sounding it out.

  "Choc... oh... laht..." he murmured, realizing with a half-closed eye that sounding it out didn't, in fact, make it seem any less foreign.

  "I think this stuff is food," said Teir, kneeling down beside the scarlet boy. "Food rations, probably, although the word I'm thinking here meaning 'rations' could also mean 'small female rodent'."

  Teir received one of the strangest looks he'd ever gotten from Sorun in his life. "Food small-female-rodent?"

  "It's probably 'rations', then."

  Sorun fingered the chocolate package some more, succeeding in getting a bit of the plastic to rip. "Why a food ration? They only impose those when food's limited, don't they?"

  "Right."

  "But we always have plenty of eat in the schoolhouse. Well, the nurses do, anyway. Remember that time Gori took a taser to my hand because I was reaching for seconds on those biscuits?" He tugged at the torn corner of the plastic and exposed part of the contents within. It was a dark, milky brown.

  A smell began to filter up through the air. Teir's eyes went wide, and his antennae stood up straight. "What is that?" he exclaimed, voice cracking a little.

  Sorun's mouth hung open. While his violet brethren's senses were going wild, his had nearly shut down from overload. He appeared positively stunned.

  Teir grabbed the package from Sorun's unresisting hands. He tore away at the rest of the plastic covering, ushering more of the smell into the air. "Quasars! This is part of the guy's food ration? This? It smells!"

  "A lot," said Sorun, still with a faraway look in his eyes.

  "Food's not supposed to smell!"

  Sorun blinked a few times to get himself back into the present. He said, "Not the stuff they feed us, anyway. D'you 'spose this is what normal people eat?"

  Teir was staring at the block of chocolate he held in his hands. It was almost as if he was transfixed, virtually hypnotized. "I... I think I want... to see what it..." He swallowed hard, quite painfully due to a throat that seemed to have gone dry without his knowing.

  "But we can't. The nurses would kill us," Sorun protested.

  His violet-eyed brethren grinned. "Let's die happy."