by Scott Azmus
“Are you still the SLJO?” asked Sark when I finally returned his call.
The snow, white on gray, had gone all but horizontal. “As far as I know.”
SLJO somewhat stood for Silly Little Jobs Officer, although the ‘S’ generally carried a bit more excretive weight. And yes, I was the most junior, general survey officer on station.
“It seems we’re about to have a visitor. A young woman by the name of ‘Iselle.’ Another one of the diplomatic corps’ sacrificial lambs.”
Looking to find my role in this, I said, “I’ll arrange temporary quarters. What account—”
“Listen for once; will you, Easy? I’ve already set all that in motion. You’re the only guy I can free up on short notice and you’re already out at the landing pad. So, congratulations, you’re on-deck as today’s guide.”
“Guide? Does she have a security clearance?”
“Absolutely, and straight from the top. Stay close. Keep her out of trouble.”
“I seriously do not have the time. I’ve lost a survey drone. It’s down, somewhere in the western quadrant. My other projects—”
“Will wait. I mean, who’s to notice? It’s not like anyone really expects you to tame the damned Vah. We’d be better off butchering them and setting them out in the chow line.”
If Sark noticed how much this easy bigotry made me bristle, he didn’t show it. Silly me; I loved the Vah. Sure, they had their issues. Even so, I’d already made real headway at getting them to respect their limits when associating with true human beings.
“And, Easy?”
Damn, but I needed to find a better way of life.
“You listening, Easy? The flight manifest lists an unidentified cargo. Something belonging to the girl. Judging by its metrics, the thing must be relatively small even though it’s carrying hazard and value codes we can’t identify.”
“And you want me to assign secure storage?”
“Negative. You’re to assess its threat level. Should it appear in any way injurious to the treaty, you’ll follow my orders to the letter.”
A glimmer of geometric effulgence drew my attention. First seen through a haze of snowflakes, Iselle vaulted from the lander’s hatch like a triumphant explorer planting their world’s gonfalon on a newly discovered shore.
I quickly lost sight of her, however, and honestly cringed at the loss as figures in bright orange all-weather jumpsuits wrestled tie-downs and power cables. With my Vah teams off hunting on their own, snow crawlers would have to suffice as ground transportation. Before anyone could ask me to rule on the proper combination of adapters or standardized fittings, I calculated Iselle’s path to the crawler and moved to intercept.
Stepping out of the streaking snow, Iselle unclasped her face guard and, lifting her chin, appeared to both smell and taste the wind. She was an astonishingly lovely young woman with ice-blue eyes, jet black hair and a certain sweet asymmetry of features that easily warmed my heart. Seemingly impervious to windchill, she watched me stow her travel gear before accompanying me to the crawler’s passenger cabin. Her mystery cargo wasn’t much bigger than the pulse scanners trying unsuccessfully to sweep it. How was something that small supposed to be dangerous?
Her appraisal of the canopy dome and outmoded furnishings came out as: “Neat. Modest. I approve.”
“It’s the best we have,” I said, feeling oddly defensive.
Expression icy dark, she studied me. “Stillman, is it?”
General survey officers don’t rate much bling for their uniforms. Aside from the single wreath and sextant, my only insignia was the tear-away chest patch reading: “Stillman, E.”
Beneath the glow of our parent world and wisps of undulating aurora, her eyes took on a luminous edge. This was also the first time I noticed the undercurrent or subliminal whisper hidden within her every word.
“Okay, Stillman. Talk to me about the ‘E.’”
“My first name’s Ezekiel.”
Smiling with subtle charm, gaze naturally assertive, she asked, “And everyone calls you Zeke, yes?”
“I wish. The problem is, my sloppy handwriting always betrays me. Each time I sign the duty log, the E and z render perfectly while the rest barely shimmers as low-density, pixelated scrawls.”
Why was I telling her this? My face warmed. How awkward. What was this? A first date or something?
“Well, I hope it’s okay for me to call you Zeke. I mean, you look like a Zeke. In return, I’m Iselle.”
The crawler lunged forward and trundled easterly.
“What do you do here, Zeke? Stuck way out here on the system’s edge? Aside from picking up visitors.”
“I share a shop where we design drones for gravity, magnetic, and seismic sampling. That, and we build various acoustic-imaging devices. And I’m in charge of keeping the Vah out of trouble.”
Our mutual gaze felt like a negotiation. I wanted to discuss her cargo but instead added, “I know you’re only here for a brief stopover, but we’ve set you up with quarters and a meal pass. We’re on an eight-on, eight-off work cycle, but you can move about the station as you like. Is there anything special you would like to see?”
Paralleling the great crevasse, the crawler crested an ancient moraine. The station’s secure perimeter lights cut through the snow.
“I’d like for the both of us to get something out of whatever tour you’ve prepared. There must be some place where you sometimes forget the day’s tedium. Somewhere you naturally excel.”
Hoping that their innate reek—and there exists no better word for the smell of busy Vah—would not put her off, I shared a story about my Vah. Later, realizing that I had lost my way back to the purpose of my story, I finished with, “Dizzy, our pack leader, is super smart…if a bit headstrong. He’s going to love meeting you. Unfortunately, our visit will have to wait. The Vah are out hunting, or I could have mushed you in by sled. If they’ve joined up with a band of wild Vah, my guys can forget the time and run all day.”
I should have responded to the delicate, silver gleam in her eyes at the mention of “wild” Vah. And I might have followed up if the crawler hadn’t entered one of those weird open spaces that sometimes form within a snowstorm’s swirling currents. Besides establishing a stable foothold in a distant star system, our research station held true to the treaty by maintaining zero-emissions and running primarily on geothermal energy and wind.
“Why are the buildings up on stilts?”
“Going way back, the first survey teams placed their structures right on top of the ice. During a tidal thaw, the meltwater would run toward the crevasse. That’s when they discovered the runoff wouldn’t, so to speak, think twice about taking a shortcut right through someone’s living quarters. The stilts and each building’s aerodynamic sweep are meant to fend off depositional snow tails that might block entrances or emergency services. The wind simply blows the snow over, under and around. And I am talking about storm-driven grit that can exploit any gap as well as dense, crusty ice that you have to attack with chisel and hammer.”
The crawler heaved into the lee of our admin building. Anchor booms dropped. Pitons popped and took purchase. The crawler eased on its hard points.
Welcoming added warmth and signs of human habitation—cooking smells, the half-silent thrum of ventilation, the gleam of freshly buffed floors—we shed our outer layers. As Iselle had nothing in the way of agenda, I figured I would first show her off to the lab geeks before, perhaps, swinging by the Vah pens.
Automatically joining our interior network, my wrist’s subdermal relayed, “She has been on the ground for the better part of an hour. What’s in the package?”
Iselle studied my face and politely put a little distance between us. She wore a black, satin, form-fitting outfit. Pleated shoulder ruffs capped bare forearms. A sky-blue collar and narrow epaulets sheltered an open V-neck which, in-turn, confined a shallow cleft of assumed cleavage. Around her neck, a single silver filament supported a tiny, jade ball.
Sark to Stillman: “Answer me! I can see you on the security feed! Don’t you dare think I can’t!”
“No details yet. Still working to establish rapport.”
“Are you seriously telling me that you haven’t gained the least scrap of information? Don’t you realize that she could be hauling a weapon? Some biohazard? Some clever bit of self-replicating nanotech?”
“Do you want me to ask about the cargo more directly?”
“Negative! Negative!” I pictured his fist denting a bulkhead. “Our intel guys just want to know what she’s ferrying to the inner worlds. As the first of our kind to visit this system’s deep interior, she must have something sweet up her sleeve. Even though we paid a terrible price to secure this treaty, rumor has it that the situation may be changing. Damn you, Easy! If you knew how to do your job, our analysis guys wouldn’t be standing around with their collective thumbs up their—”
Imagining a trace of static, I sent: “Message garbled. Say again all after ‘situation may be changing.’”
“Damned, son of—”
“What was that, sir? Sir?”
After sharing a plate of cheese and chilled fruit, Iselle and I toured the common areas adjacent to the cafeteria. While our scientists and support personnel allowed friendly passage, every one of them found some means of making eye contact with Iselle. Not the kind of fleeting glance one might toss someone’s way in passing but extended, meaningful gazes as though equally drawn to her unique magnetism.
And might some of them have recognized her, somehow?
Anyway, like little kids showing off, most of my colleagues jumped at the chance to discuss their projects. In fact, one of the experiments I’d helped tool up brought together seismic and gravimetric practices to chart topographic deformations and better track rafting ice-crusts. Bless her heart for trying to look interested.
Our biology guys were the only ones not at all affected by Iselle’s presence. And this was a feeling that Iselle reciprocated. Seemingly unaware of their discussion, she broke away to investigate the curving traceries—interlacing patterns, raised lines and dots—of yet more incoherent Vah graffiti.
Why was I afraid to straight-out ask about her cargo?
“And I am begging you,” argued one biologist to another, “in the simplest terms, to acknowledge that you are mistaken. All ecogeographic guidelines point to the fact that larger species show up at higher latitudes and in colder environments. It comes down to, if you will only let me finish, to their surface-to-volume ratios! Those radiating the least body heat per unit mass stay the most productive in severely cold climates. Our skinny little Vah do not conform! As such, they simply do not belong here. I’m telling you, the Vah are as alien to this moon as are we!”
Hands-on-knees, Iselle followed a curl of Vah graffiti.
“Why,” I asked to break a span of silence, “did you become a diplomat? Given all the odd tasks I have, I sometimes think I’m losing myself here. It makes me wonder why I worked so hard for my commission.”
Fingers jumping from one faded blot to the next, she said, “The product of a rigid and very public family life, I thought it important to study somewhere far from those influences. When I heard, through my father naturally, that the diplomatic corps was recruiting, my instincts told me to roll the dice. At the time, I thought I had nothing at all to lose.”
“Why? What did you lose?”
“Just what all human diplomats are meant to lose.”
“Which was?”
“Strong ties to our individual sense of humanity.”
Unsure as to what that might mean, I followed with, “What special characteristics do the diplomatic corps look for?”
“Sensitivity. Empathy. I was always willing to learn and I found establishing rapport with exotics, those you call ‘aliens,’ surprisingly direct and uncomplicated.”
When the graffiti trace petered out, I answered her irritation with, “You know, as long as I’ve thoroughly housetrained each individual, the Vah have free run. As for dealing with their ‘penchant for vandalism,’ to obviously quote my boss, I must have worn ten or twenty chisels down to nubs trying to get rid of their graffiti.”
Body tensing, she glared up at me. “You chiseled these away? You?”
“The little guys have even scrawled a bunch of stuff across the walls of my stateroom!”
Rising, she gripped my elbow. “Any that you have left intact?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I? Who’d be likely to see it there and take offense?”
“May I take a look?”
I saw that we had arrived at the stairwell leading up to more labs or down through the crew dorms. As I had already destroyed most of the Vah writing above, I chose down. Young men and women were preparing for shift change. Honeycombed bunk curtains swished shut. Someone called for us to get the hell out. Redolent of soap and untamed mold, steam poured from a bank of community showers.
“You live down here?”
“Sure,” I said. “Junior officers share living quarters. Our spaces are just one more level down. I’m the second door on the left.”
An admission which made me cringe just a bit. When in my life had I not left my quarters a total mess? And, yes, the instant I cracked my stateroom’s magnetic seal, Iselle’s emotions pegged toward pained disgust. A junior officer merits a bunk, storage cabinets with a fold-down desk slab and a sink with mirror. For a complete picture of my particular situation, add a mound of grimy jumpsuits and an avalanche of ignored qualification manuals still in shrink wrap. I had not squared away my bunk in weeks. The floor was littered with Vah harnesses, bound ropes and other equipment requiring repair, splicing, or refit. Worse: compared to my unwashed socks, the places where the Vah went to, you know, “use” their assigned deck gratings might smell as sweet as a garland of winter flowers.
Tossing a snarled gang line aside, I drew Iselle to a swath of overlapping dots and doodles knee high on an interior bulkhead. Grazing her fingertips across the stippled surface, she smiled up at me and said, “Phonetic segments. Stanzas or strophes of a poem. Lyrics.” She followed a curl of irregular specks around a footlocker. “The metrical scheme is a bit of a puzzle, however.”
Shifting training manuals, tracing arabesques and tiny spirals, Iselle released a sigh. Out of nowhere, her eyes misted.
“What is it? The smell?”
As Iselle shook her head and reached to take my hand, a swell of shared joy and pure, euphoric buoyancy shook my stability.
Voices.
I was hearing voices.
Voices that seemed familiar but at the same time utterly foreign. And this was not an event that I could ever have anticipated. The flare of conjoined voices was pure and sweet and hopeful while intermittently descending in fitful, layered bursts of loss and regret.
“I am finding directions for intonation, pitch, stress, tempo, and rhythm,” said Iselle. “But what throat could tolerate such variation?”
Drawing back, fighting a swell of joy and tear-summoning pride, I took in my stateroom with a renewed view. “I’m sorry about the mess. Let’s get out of here. There’s somewhere else you might like to visit.”
We were deep in a lower passage when, balancing a pile of linen, a small Vah first went left then right and then stalled as she tried to avoid colliding with Iselle’s knees. As we do not breed housekeeping Vah for strength or agility, I did not know her litter date or name.
If she had a name.
Vah cared for little more than pack hierarchy; who’s number one, who’s not, who might have been in the top ten last week but might screw up and fall out of position this week. Rather than let them fight over the pecking order, I had boiled everything down to one rule of thumb. A tired Vah was an obedient Vah. All I asked in return was respect and a lifelong desire to please. Taken as a whole, housekeeping Vah were pretty much at the bottom of all hierarchy.
“Well,” said Iselle. “Hello there.”
The fleshy, lapis-blue k
nots dotting the creature’s scalloped crest were a perfect match to the silver on blue of her eyes. The fringe of fur running wrist to elbow prickled as with some analog to goosebumps. She flexed her body scales.
As Iselle whispered with the Vah, I could just make out the insinuation of an additional, underlying murmur at the bare edge of consciousness. What was Iselle sharing on such a subtle waveband? As she knelt before the young Vah, I admired the way she naturally made the little beast comfortable with her height. Squatting, shifting to sit crosslegged, she slowed her breathing and even adjusted her inhale-exhale volume to match the Vah.
“Pay attention, Zeke. This is a skill that may be of future use to you. When attempting to form a momentary bond, we first attune, one with the other, using body language and facial cues to sift through the full weight of our peaceful intentions. Meanwhile, I am also working to exclude all human presuppositions so as to prevent clutter and other, survival-based instincts. When possible, you must try to imagine tasting whatever your partner regularly tastes. After that, please try imagining what your partner’s hands and feet would notice or feel if in contact with the ground or perhaps even when grooming.”
The Vah cooed and hummed in ways that I’d never seen in their species. Where we have ribs, Vah have heat gills that louver to provide streamlining in accordance with temperature or wind speed. This one’s heat gills fluttered before opening to allow Iselle’s inspection.
Iselle next held out her hands, palms up. As did the Vah, in her own way. Somehow Iselle had separated the shrill wheezing sounds of the Vah’s voice, which to my ear are not unlike that of a child’s harmonica played softly and badly, into something intelligible and, for Iselle, relatable.