Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  So much of what she’d seen was so seductively tempting, Alex’s reputation didn’t even begin to do him justice. He’d been as good as his word, integrating himself into the field to take her for a sunlit stroll on the Moon and then kicking them both off the surface as though they were classic superheroes soaring down the Terrestrial gravity well, passing a couple of HeavyLifter shuttles en route and taking her for a loop around Sutherland Station before plunging at last into Earth’s atmosphere, sailing blissfully through the air to a landing on a flower-covered mountain meadow. He’d given her a smile she’d never seen from him before, that mingled delight at his accomplishment with the sheer pleasure of sharing it with someone who appreciated what he’d done. And she’d smiled back.

  The possibilities were as endless as the risks.

  How to put that into words, she asked herself at the keyboard, staring at the glowing cursor on her flatscreen display, or rather, how to put it into words that are safe?

  She was still struggling hours later when she called it quits here, as she had in the VR field, and put the office to bed. A call to the Provost Marshal’s office brought one of his cars to carry her across to the North Field, she went the rest of the way on foot.

  She almost kept on going down Rosamond when she came abreast of her house, it wasn’t all that much farther to the park and Hotshots and despite the hour she was sure of at least a beer and some food from Sue. Being Friday, there’d probably be the usual gang of suspects, possibly a poker game, someone to stand her a round of eight-ball at the pool table. But she didn’t want company, wasn’t sure she’d know quite how to handle it. She felt scrambled up inside, as though what seemed like solid earth beneath her feet was really ice, ready to trip her up at any step. And she still wasn’t sure why. The Virtual experience itself or the emotions it pulled from her? It all seemed so real, except that was the point. The damn thing called into question the very concept of reality. And if she couldn’t trust what was real, how could she trust any reaction derived from it. Christ, for all she knew, she could still be there, sprawled on the couch in Alex’s lab, cycling through a VR scenario of herself walking home, considering the day’s events.

  She let her head loll forward, clasping her hands behind her neck, and groaned. She’d been wrestling with those questions the whole evening and all she had to show for it was a killer headache.

  Her legs decided they didn’t want to go any farther and she plopped herself down on the shallow slope, halfway between the road and the houses. She knew it was too chilly to stay here for any length of time but couldn’t find the resource to get herself moving. It was the strangest sensation; she knew what was needed, but also found the effort of making the decision, much less carrying it out, quite beyond her. Almost as though, despite the fact that her eyes were open and she seemed fully aware of the world around her, she was actually deep in REM sleep and this nothing but a dream.

  If only, she thought, and started slightly as a shape materialized behind her, hunkering down on its heels to rest hands gently on her shoulders.

  “An impressive view, Shea-Pilot,” Kymri noted quietly.

  She couldn’t help relaxing back against him. Hal blood ran hotter than human, a warmth that rose through the skin, and his fur held the cinnamon tang she’d come to associate with them.

  “One among many,” she replied.

  “Come here often?”

  “Every chance.” And marveled that she could still produce coherent speech.

  “You are cold.”

  “We are as a species,” she told him sagely, “compared to you.” And hoped this was a dream, refusing to accept that she could act so stupidly in reality.

  He rumbled laughter and tweaked his claws under her arms, a rude tickle that made her jump with a sharp cry of protest.

  “Don’t you dare do that,” she cried, sprawled on her back and feeling totally foolish.

  He held out a hand. “It served its purpose, you are now fully cognizant.”

  “I suppose you never get tired,” she grumbled, scrambling up on her own and not caring how awkward she looked, pausing a moment to brush dust from her uniform.

  “Of course,” he said in a laughing tone, “have you not yet learned that in all ways we are superior to you?”

  She muttered something foul and it wasn’t until he burst out loud with laughter that she realized she’d spoken in Hal.

  “You look awful,” he said.

  “Been a bitch of a day.” She decided that if she narrowed her concentration to its tightest possible focus and took things a step at a time, she could reach her back door. After that, first soft surface she came across, sofa or bed, it could have her.

  “Come,” he said to her, taking her by one hand with his other across her back, “join us.”

  “Another time, Kymri, please,” she protested, “I really can’t!”

  “You have not visited since we finished the renovations to our habitat.”

  “It’ll make a better impression when I’m awake.”

  “Perhaps. But do you more good now.”

  “It’s late.”

  “No matter. We have been waiting for you.”

  The ground floor was still fundamentally as the Air Force Housing Office had furnished it, on a par with what Colonel Sallinger was entitled to as Base Commander. Kymri led her upstairs though, to the bedrooms, where some substantial changes had been made. The style, and indeed some of the individual pieces, Nicole recognized from her time aboard Range Guide—plus one of the early articles submitted by Ben Ciari to the National Geographic—and she sank down into a corner piled high with plush pillows with a groan of sybaritic delight. She’d left her shoes at the base of the stairs and wished she could ditch her pantyhose as well, the better to rub her bare feet in the luxuriously thick rug the Hal had brought down from orbit. The lighting was indirect and much softer than was comfortable for most human eyes, since the Hal functioned better across a wider range of visual perception; one of the odd discoveries that had been made early on was that both races had need of sunglasses. And spectacles as well. Nicole had no problem with the twilight. As a matter of fact, her own acuity seemed to have improved with her return from space; her eyes were markedly sharper, both in terms of what they they could see and how well she saw it.

  “Try this,” Kymri suggested.

  It was a bowl of steaming liquid, slightly more than drink but less than soup, bouillon with a bite that had most in common with the spices that gave Cajun panfry its taste. She drained the contents cautiously, the first sip telling her that not only was this potent stuff, its temperature as well was worthy of respect. Even so, she gave her tongue a minor burn. Kymri brought her a glass of ice water and she fished out a cube, laving it over the sore spot to ease the pain.

  “Shea-Pilot,” Kymri asked, “would you care to refresh yourself?”

  She looked up at him, gathering herself with a breath and a shudder, shaking her head while she looked about for somewhere to set her empty bowl.

  “Wha’ssat mean?” she asked more sleepily than she really felt. “Why are you always so formal with my name, Kymri? I’m Nicole to my friends.”

  “You are freer with your names. Among the People, we have House names, which are tied to our various tasks and responsibilities. There are names, such as my own and Shavrin’s, which are honors.”

  “You mean, like titles?” She leaned forward, holding out her mug for a refill, hoping the broth would clear her inner cobwebs even more. “The way the British King, say, appoints someone a Lord or Lady or Knight?”

  Kymri gave that some thought and asked the CyberCrystal standing on a tabletop off to one side for clarification; it came in a rapid-fire burst of Hal that Nicole couldn’t begin to follow.

  “A very rough analog,” he told her. “And then are the names shared between friends.” He spoke a Hal word first, one different from what Nicole was used to hearing as a translation. She didn’t have a crystal to help and her PortaComp
was in her shoulder bag, which had gotten away from her sometime after coming in the downstairs door, but some serious thought popped up a possible answer, culled from one of Ciari’s tapes. The term generally used referred to acquaintances, professional associations mostly with only shallow personal resonances. This though was something altogether different. The friendship implied a bond, rarely entered into and never taken lightly. A commitment as meaningful, and in some ways more demanding, than a marriage.

  “I understand, I think, the distinctions. But, Shea-Pilot, all the time.” She shrugged, then brightened with an inspiration. “Can’t you consider Nicole my honor name?”

  “To single you out from your comrades, that would be a mistake. But among ourselves, it would be a privilege. The question, however, remains unanswered.”

  She looked, uncomprehending for a moment while sorting through the files of short-term memory.

  “I should be going,” she said, and made semicoherent excuses about home and bed.

  “You will sleep as well here,” he replied, “and better.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you afraid to try?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “There is a ceremony, the chn’chywa. For want of a better term, it is a sort of consecration of what is for us the heart of the house. You have a place in it because you are both of Shavrin’s Hearth, as we are of her Family, and of this range, in which we make our home during our stay.”

  “Hearth and Family,” she asked, “what’s the difference?”

  “The latter encompasses all who serve her. Clan is a word used much the same way among your kind. Hearth”—and he paused for a slow, steady, single breath, as though weighing for a final, irrevocable time what he was about to say—“betokens those of her blood, who reside in the household of her heart.”

  “Kymri,” Nicole said with helpless desperation, words coming in a madcap babble that proved her point, “I can’t. I’m totally wrecked, I’ll make a muck of it.”

  He smiled lazily, showing teeth, and she thought of Sher Khan, the great tiger of Kipling’s Jungle Book. “You are, you know,” he said, “assigned to me and mine as liaison.”

  She laughed without anger, responding in the same playful manner. But to her surprise, he was gently serious.

  “You cannot assist, Nicole,” using her name for the first time, “those who you do not know.”

  Nicole was so tired, she couldn’t see a way out. She doubted she’d have been able to do any better even at her peak. And she didn’t really want to.

  Matai was the celebrant, stepping into view at Kymri’s quiet summons. She came up to Nicole’s breast, which placed her close to Terran norms for a woman’s height, with a frame that bespoke a wiry, almost alley-cat strength rather than the massive tigerish power reflected in Kymri and Tscadi. She had a sable primary coat that made her almost invisible in the room’s shadows; she’d been there almost from the start, Nicole realized, and chuckled at her earlier thoughts about her own eyesight. Better perhaps but still nowhere near a match for her hosts. As the Hal cyber tech steepled her fingers and made the slight bow of greeting, Nicole saw that she was wearing a dress, a sleeveless sheath design from the co-op boutique that showed off her athletic figure to good advantage. Her voice was low like Nicole’s but without the husky resonance, and she spoke with a shy diffidence that echoed her manner, so quietly Nicole had to strain to hear, much less understand, what was said.

  “Do not be alarmed,” Kymri told her as she looked to him in confusion. “Matai’s focus is more the written speech of your cybernetics systems than of your spoken word. She is much the same with her own people.” And he quickly repeated the line—or so Nicole deduced from the few scattered words she caught—in rapid-fire Hal to his crewmate, who bared teeth in a snarl of irritation that seemed so human a reaction to Nicole that she couldn’t help but giggle.

  “I don’t know what’s expected of me,” Nicole said.

  “Matai will lead. You observe and follow. Trust me, Nicole. It is necessary for you to know this. A time will come when you must take your rightful place among the People. The less you are ignorant of, the easier that will be.”

  An extension had been tacked on the side of the house and the ground-floor bathroom expanded to create a space that was perhaps half the size of the living room. Thanks to a superbly artful arrangement of lights and mirrors, it actually seemed much larger, with almost no sense at all of being an artificial construct.

  The heat was a palpable force, sweat bursting from Nicole’s pores within moments of her entrance as her body tried to cope. She couldn’t take her eyes off Matai as the Hal moved through the room, laying out towels and robes and checking the toiletries set by the tub, any more than she could off Kymri during their morning runs together, unaware that her own movements were an unconscious attempt to follow. When Matai caught her though and made a chirrup noise, as if to ask what was up, Nicole flushed and looked away, trying to cover herself by focusing on the extraordinary variety of foliage around her.

  The room was thick with plants, mostly broad-leaf tropicals interspersed with a multitude of fiery blossoms that cast an intoxicating fragrance. Standard quarantine forbade the importation of any off-world fauna so she knew all that lay around her was of Terrestrial origin, yet the choice and arrangement was such that the overall effect was disconcertingly alien. She had an eerie feeling that she was no longer on her world, nothing that she saw was familiar to any of her physical senses, and wondered if this was a further residue of her Virtual session, that it somehow made her more susceptible to external stimulus?

  Matai peeled off the sheath and then the leotard worn beneath it, sinking gracefully down onto her knees beside the tub with a gesture that indicated Nicole should join her. Shaking her head, with a flash glance towards the door and the thought, This is nuts I can’t go through with it I gotta get out of here, Nicole turned her back and began unbuttoning her shirt. She knew she wasn’t going to do anything of the sort, it would be too direct and great an insult to the Hal. She simply had to trust that they would be as considerate of her. Way to go, girl, she told herself, all your life you dream of contacting whatever’s out there and now it’s in your face, you got your wish, you can’t hack it? Terrific. Fact was, and she didn’t bother denying it, she was as scandalized as excited, with fear in equal measure on both sides of the line.

  Even on her knees, she seemed to tower over Matai, and the surface contrast between them couldn’t be more marked, the Hal at one with the shadows that seemed to swirl about them while Nicole gleamed like alabaster, pale as a ghost, with a painfully sharp demarcation line down from her shoulders to the top of her cleavage marking the boundary between what was tanned and what wasn’t. Bilaterally symmetrical, bipedal homonid, she noted, seeking refuge in the analytical as Matai mixed oils from various jars while crooning to herself, much as Nicole did when nervous or stressed. Warm-blooded, carbon-based, mammalian, she continued, opposable thumbs. Evolved from creatures who bear a superficial resemblance to Terrestrial cats. And therein, she knew, lay the greatest danger. Because the Hal appeared so much like Earthly felines, there was an unconscious, automatic tendency to ascribe to them similar traits of attitude and behavior. Rather than broaden the knowledge base between the species a slow, careful step at a time, with judgments grounded only on that experience, and abandoning any prejudicial assumptions. Much like walking across a frozen lake without the slightest clue where the ice was safe and where it was thin as paper.

  A pendant crystal, smaller variant of the CyberCrystals that were the Hal’s organic computers and a mark of her office and status, dangled from Matai’s right ear, somehow catching even the diffuse twilight and focusing it deep within itself into a glowing sapphire radiance. Matai opened a gleaming wood box and removed a second earring lying on a silken cloth, a crystal bound with silver that at first glance seemed as clear as the one she already wore. But this wasn’t for her. She took the
jewel in both hands and, with a bow of the head, held it towards Nicole. Looked up quizzically a moment later when nothing happened, to realize that Nicole hadn’t hardly a clue what came next. She replaced the earring in its case and arranged Nicole’s hands palms upward, as hers had been, then lay her own atop them, so that whatever was being held was totally enclosed. And held out the earring once more.

  Nicole looked at her hands, then into the Hal’s eyes, then did as she was silently bid. Only to gasp in astonishment as her fingers lit with a fiery glow. From Matai came a noise of approval as they broke their hands apart to reveal the crystal gleaming from deep within, as though a fire had been lit in its heart. Matai took the earring and the luminescence faded almost to nothing, but the moment she lay it on Nicole’s still-outheld palm it blazed brighter than before. This was the fireheart, one of the rarest and most prized gems known to the Hal, valued mostly for the ability of the virgin, untouched crystals to imprint with their initial wearer and manifest a unique inner radiance. In accordance, so the Hal believed, with the essential character of that person.

  Matai took the jewel and hung it from Nicole’s right ear. And then bowed until her forehead touched the floor, an obeisance deeper than any Nicole had before from a Hal. As she straightened, and without caring whether the response was appropriate or not, Nicole did the same, as deeply, as formally. To the uninitiated, Matai’s face remained an expressionless mask throughout but as Nicole straightened—taking a quick moment en route to flex her feet in a vain attempt to relieve the growing ache in her ankles—she caught some quirks of motion at the corners of the Hal’s mouth that she recognized as a barely repressed smile.

  An acrid, though not at all unpleasant, burr tickled the base of her throat and Nicole cocked her head in recognition of the scent; it was a much milder concentration of the atmospheric hallucinogen she’d experienced aboard Range Guide, during the Memorial Service for the Hal and human dead. A heady time, and she closed her eyes at the memory of Ben Ciari’s form blurring in her perceptions between the human reality and an illusory facade that made him one of the Hal. A tiger, she’d thought with fierce pride, my tiger! Although she’d known even then that was a lie, for he was no one’s but his own. Her eyes closed tighter at a pang of loss twisted tight around a skein of jealousy that refused to get out of her heart, that he was apart from her and worse where she herself so yearned to be. And another memory image swirled into focus, of her own transformation, no facade it seemed in her case but a perfectly natural evolution of self that made her one with the Hal crew and especially their Captain.