She departed. Glancing around, I saw that my security team had apparently cordoned off the entire observation deck. They had stationed themselves at the entrances and near the few open senek stalls, leaving me in near-perfect solitude. Ordinarily I would have objected to the celebrity treatment, but I had to admit that, after the claustrophobic handling I’d received on Elteni thus far, the idea of wandering without a uniformed shadow at my heel was appealing. I purchased another cup of tea and walked up and down some more, looking out through the viewports at the different ships.
For most of humankind, I knew, such sights were still the province of fantasy. In my anger at being denied Vardesh Prime, I had forgotten what an astonishing gift it was to be granted entry for any length of time into a world so entirely beyond my own. Now I rediscovered something of the incredulous thrill I had felt at my first glimpse of the Pinion’s shuttle descending over Zurich. Beneath me, arrayed in glittering ranks, were ships harnessing speed and power that exceeded the scope of human imagination. I had lived on two of them. I had seen cities in the sky. And I had no reason to believe that I would ever see them again. I didn’t share Fletcher’s easy confidence that this was only the first of many such journeys for me. It might very well be the last. The Council might declare me compromised, broken, permanently grounded. All at once my departure from Elteni loomed in my eyes as impossibly final. It didn’t matter that Earth was still five months away. My first step onto the Ascendant or the Sidereus, two days from now, would be my first step home.
Before I left the observation deck, I had found the clarity I sought. I returned my empty cup to the tea stand and sat down on one of the stools. Then I took out my flexscreen and sent a message to Fletcher. It read, I’m sorry. I can’t go with you on the Sidereus. I’d still like to see you again. I understand if you don’t want to see me. Be safe. Be strong. I didn’t wait for a reply. I wasn’t sure there would be one. I put the device away and went in search of Zey.
Over the day and a half that remained to me on Elteni, my sense that I had begun a slow turning away from the Vardeshi grew ever stronger. I spent as little time as possible in my quarters, preferring to roam the corridors of the starhaven with phone in hand, preserving what memories I could. I recognized the feeling from the last days of my college study-abroad program. Everything was imbued with significance by the simple fact that it might be the last of its kind I ever saw. I spent hours in the marketplace, watching the ceaseless flow of people intent on unfathomable errands, studying their features and postures and gaits, so like my own and yet so different. I spoke to some of them. On Arkhati I had begun photographing Vardeshi faces with the vague idea of creating a portrait series, an idea shared no doubt by every Stranger who had visited a starhaven. I continued that project now, having been assured by Sohra that I would offend no one by asking to photograph them. She and Zey helped me identify promising subjects and, on the rare occasions when English and standard Vardeshi proved insufficient, communicate with them. I found that nearly everyone I approached was happy to oblige my camera. I didn’t ask for their names, only their ages and provinces of origin, which I scribbled down in my sketchbook.
I liked the project because it gave me a reason to overcome my shyness and speak to strangers with interesting faces. It had another unanticipated benefit, in that it provided me with a thoroughly unexceptional reason to take a beautiful high-resolution photograph of Hathan. It was Zey who facilitated this triumph, and he did it so casually I knew I could put to rest any remaining doubts about his discretion. Hathan looked over my shoulder as I wrote my notes. “Male. Nasthav Province. Do you want my age in Vardeshi or Earth years?”
“Earth, if you know the conversion.”
“About . . . thirty-seven.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.” He sounded amused. “Our average lifespan is a little longer than yours. Not much, twenty years or so. In your terms, Saresh is forty. Zey is thirty-four.”
“Thirty-four?” I said wonderingly. “He looks about seventeen. And didn’t he just graduate from the Institute?”
“Our children start school later than yours. And the standard education program takes longer to complete.”
“Bigger curriculum,” I said dryly, but I was thinking, Thirty-seven. With a lifespan of, say, a hundred years. It could have worked. I had to suppress a sigh.
I saw Fletcher twice during those last days, once at a panel discussion on interspecies communication, once at a farewell dinner held jointly in our honor. Both times he was subdued and achingly polite. He hadn’t responded to my message. I understood. But I missed him desperately, and as I sat beside him at the dinner, I had to keep my right hand hidden in my lap, balled into a fist, to stop myself from reaching for him.
The sudden coldness between us didn’t go unnoticed. Most of my crewmates were too tactful to comment on it, but Zey crashed through their forbearance with characteristic energy.
“Where’s your human?” he demanded on our last day on the starhaven. It was evening, and we were finishing up a last stroll through the market level. “I haven’t seen him in days. You used to be inseparable. I was getting ready to sneak him onto the Ascendant in a packing crate. I didn’t know how else we’d get you off Elteni.”
I knew I was blushing. “He’s not my human. And he was at dinner last night.”
“But you barely even talked to each other. And he didn’t come out with us afterward.”
“Leave it, Zey,” Saresh said quellingly.
“What? I’m just asking—”
“Look!” said Sohra. “There’s someone from Irinesh. See her, Eyvri? In the Echelon uniform? You should try to get a picture.”
Grateful for the distraction, I grabbed my phone and went to accost the young woman she had pointed out. The Irinesh skin tone was the rarest, and I didn’t have any other examples of that delicate lilac hue in my photo series, but I knew Sohra was less concerned with the portraits than she was with my obvious embarrassment. I stood talking with the woman from Irinesh a little longer than was strictly necessary, and when I got back to my table, a visibly chastened Zey was listening mutely while Sohra and Saresh discussed the songs they planned to perform at the launch party that evening.
I ate an early dinner that night—dodging Fletcher in the galley had turned out to be the most problematic aspect of our estrangement—and spent a quiet hour sitting in Elteni’s little botanical garden before I went to get ready for the launch party. I had resolved to have a good time through sheer force of will, if need be, but in the end it didn’t take much work. The party was held in what I took to be some kind of meditation studio. It resembled a woodland grove, with several full-sized trees apparently growing out of the deck plates. Softly colored light globes hung from their branches. The walls displayed a panoramic image of a forest, and in the dim light, with real trees scattered around, the illusion worked surprisingly well. I wondered who was responsible for the decorations. Saresh, probably. The coppery gold leaves were those of the trees in Nasthav Province, I was almost sure.
Equal care had gone into the selection of refreshments, all of which had been approved for human consumption, including several varieties of fruit artfully suspended in baskets from the trees. As I helped myself to a handful of what looked like pale blue grapes and tasted vaguely like cantaloupe, I understood Hathan’s reluctance to leave behind the bounty of a starhaven’s hydroponics bays. The food plants grown on the Ascendant had been selected for quick maturation times and efficient use of a small space. On the trip home, I would be able to supplement my dried and frozen rations with the Vardeshi analogues of lentils and kale, but the next fresh fruit I tasted would have grown in the soil of Earth.
Having heard Sohra and Saresh discussing song choices that afternoon, and knowing the Vardeshi preference for performers who were known to them personally, I was surprised to find that the majority of the evening’s music was furnished by strangers. One corner of the meditation studio was occupied by a
troupe of five musicians. They played softly, sending their melodies drifting into the air like smoke, to complement conversation rather than compete with it. They were traveling artists, Zey explained, who earned passage with their music. They were typically hired by the largest vessels, those with passenger complements of five hundred or more, to provide entertainment on long-haul journeys across Vardeshi space.
“Five hundred?” I said. “I didn’t know you had ships that big.”
I didn’t voice the dark thought that followed, but Zey seemed to anticipate it. “It has its risks,” he acknowledged. “The last outbreak of the Flare, forty years ago, was on one of those ships. That’s why there were so many casualties. But it’s the only way to make cross-system travel affordable.”
For families, I thought. With children. And then I snapped the thought off like a thread, unwilling to let it unspool any further, and refocused my attention on the music.
In a pause between songs I heard my flexscreen chime. Confused, because all my friends on Elteni were already in the room, I looked at it. The incoming message was from Fletcher. It read, I’m outside. Can we talk for a minute?
“Outside is a tricky concept on a starhaven,” I said lightly when I joined him in the hallway a few moments later. “I was about to go look for a pressure suit.”
Fletcher smiled, but his eyes were solemn. “I thought I’d save you the trouble. Look, I’m not here to try to change your mind. I know that’s not going to happen. For either of us. I still think you’re making a mistake. But I get that it’s not my call. And you must have your reasons, although I honestly can’t imagine what they are.”
“I know,” I said.
He nodded and looked briefly away, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’re both going back out there tomorrow. And we’re both going alone. This is our last chance to see each other. I don’t want to fight about what ship you should be launching on. I just want to be with you while I still can. So I thought maybe you could invite me to your party and we could just shelve the whole question and try to have a good time.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
We were never more than an arm’s length apart for the rest of the night. Fletcher’s presence was an unlooked-for gift, and I drank it in greedily, as if I could somehow store it up against the loneliness to come. I knew he was trying to do the same thing. There came a moment toward the end of the party when the professional musicians stepped down, in a Vardeshi custom Zey had explained to me earlier, to allow for performances from the guests. Sohra and Saresh stepped forward. To my surprise, they began singing a bluegrass song. It was a sweet and poignant evocation of lost love, one of my favorites, as Saresh knew perfectly well. I had no idea when they could have rehearsed it. Fletcher and I stood a little apart from the other onlookers in the shelter of a flowering tree. Their clear harmonies came to us on a stirring of air scented with blossoms, an improbable breath of spring from another world. Impulsively I reached out and took Fletcher’s hand. His warm fingers closed around mine. I felt a gladness so piercing it was almost a pain. I had been ready to let him go. I had been certain Zey was lost to me. Now I had both of them back. It might be only a temporary convergence. But I had seen enough of the night around us, in which ships and planets and stars sped endlessly away from each other, to know how rare that was.
There were a few more songs. Fletcher himself took the stage at Sohra’s insistence and sang a folk song that was a favorite of my father’s, accompanying himself on his guitar, which had been hastily retrieved by a member of his security detail. Then people began to drift toward the door. Lulled by wine and music and the promise of one more night in Fletcher’s arms, I thought nothing of it when he stopped to speak to Hathan, who was standing with Reyna in the corridor. Their remarks in standard Vardeshi seemed innocent enough. Fletcher said, “Bright stars to guide your path, khavi.” It was the farewell traditionally offered by the Vardeshi to departing spacefarers.
Hathan nodded. “And yours. If you get a chance, check out that museum in Khezendri.”
“Yeah, I will.” Fletcher made as if to turn away, then paused. “Oh, and one more thing.” He added a few words so clipped it was all I could do to place them as the North Continent dialect. Hathan replied in the same language, glancing significantly at Reyna, who clenched her right fist and raised it slightly in a suggestion of the Echelon salute. Fletcher and Hathan studied each other for a tense moment. Then Fletcher nodded slightly. His next words, in English, were directed at me. “Let’s go.”
“What was that about?” I asked as we walked away.
Fletcher said, “Just a little friendly advice.” I decided to leave it at that.
That night we paced ourselves more carefully than before, savoring the slow unfolding of intimacy. Toward morning we both slept a little. I resented the lost time, but falling asleep in Fletcher’s arms was a luxury in its own right. When my alarm sounded, we went and stood in the shower together. We had spent all our desire. The need for closeness remained. I rested my head on his shoulder, tightening my arms around his neck, and felt his arms tighten around me in response. I closed my eyes. The hot water drumming incessantly down on both of us was an utterly prosaic comfort. We could have been standing in the shower in my apartment in California or his in Cleveland. When we emerged, I saw that it was much later than I’d thought. Fletcher laughed as he watched me towel my hair dry and hurry into my uniform. “Don’t worry. They’re not going to leave without you.”
The Ascendant was scheduled to launch before the Sidereus. Fletcher walked with me down to the docking level, my duffel bag slung over his shoulder. We’d said our private farewells before leaving the Green Zone, but I found myself resisting the approaching separation with unexpected force. As we descended the ramp toward the Ascendant’s airlock, I looked up at him questioningly. He ruffled my hair and murmured in English, “Text me so I know you got home okay.” The unexpected reference to our shared culture proved too much for me. I flung my arms around him, heedless of the curious and amused and speculative gazes of my crewmates. For the last time I breathed in his familiar scent and felt the warmth of another human body against mine. “Be safe,” Fletcher whispered into my hair. “Be strong.” Then he released me and stepped back. I turned away, dry-eyed, to join my waiting crewmates in front of the airlock.
Our orders were to meet in the axis chamber in thirty minutes for a prelaunch briefing. I dropped my duffel bag in my quarters, cast a fond look around the neat little room, and went to make senek. Hathan entered the axis chamber while I was still arranging the trays. I fussed unnecessarily with the alignment of the spoons while working up my nerve. Then I said, “Khavi? What did Fletcher say to you in the hallway last night?”
Hathan looked up from his flexscreen. “You didn’t ask him?”
“I tried. He just said he gave you some friendly advice.”
“I wouldn’t call it friendly. He said”—Hathan cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, it was in a credible imitation of Fletcher’s American drawl—“‘touch her again and I’ll rip your face off.’”
“No kidding,” I said, shocked and a little pleased. “That’s pretty gallant. And pretty ambitious. Aren’t you guys about four times as strong as us?”
“That’s essentially what I said.”
“Essentially?”
He didn’t smile, but I heard the humor in his voice, as I had more and more frequently since the Listening. “I called him . . . There’s a word in the Northern dialect for a menial worker who wipes down the ranshai mats after practice. It isn’t a compliment. And I reminded him that you’re already well protected.”
“By Reyna,” I guessed.
“Yes.”
“Well . . .” I studied the tray in front of me, which was Saresh’s, checking the colors of the sugar pellets a third time. “Don’t hold it against him, okay?”
“I won’t. He’s worried about you. And he’s disappointed. If he had his way, you’d be launching on the Si
dereus right now.”
I looked at him sharply. “You knew?”
“I guessed.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say. Should I apologize for not telling him about Fletcher’s offer? What difference would it make now? I had chosen the Ascendant. I decided to let my decision speak for itself.
Hathan evidently thought it did, because he didn’t pursue the matter. Instead he said, “Eyvri? What did you say to Zey? It must have been you. Saresh and I both tried to talk him out of transferring. We begged, frankly. To no effect. The last I saw, he was dead set on leaving.”
I wondered what I could possibly say to answer the question without giving myself away. It took me a while to find an answer. Hathan didn’t apologize or withdraw the question, as Saresh had done the other day. He simply waited, skimming through messages on his flexscreen in a manner that made it clear that I still had his attention. At length I said, “You might say I appealed to his humanity.”
“That explains it, then. You’re the only one who could have done that. And I’m glad you did. He belongs on the Ascendant.” I had turned away and was halfway to my seat before he added, “You both do.”
The next member of the crew to arrive was Zey. His gaze flicked interestedly from his brother’s face to my own, which I knew still wore the slightly foolish smile engendered by Hathan’s last words, but he didn't say anything as he settled onto the seat next to mine. The others filed in and found their places, and the briefing commenced. A wave of fierce gladness overtook me as I listened to the status reports from the different departments. I still missed Fletcher. But I belonged here. And not only because Hathan himself had said so.
“We’re cleared to depart,” said Ziral. “Except—sir? Elteni’s asking us to confirm our destination.”
“Novi Alkhat?” Hathan prompted.
Caught off guard, I stammered, “Uh. I mean. Earth. Right?”
Hathan said, “I expected better from you, Novi. Surely by now you’ve learned to read a star chart.”
Bright Shards (The Vardeshi Saga Book 2) Page 28