I wished I’d been there to hear her speech. I thought Anton would have appreciated it. Dr. Sawyer too. After I’d sent my first packet of notes home, he’d written to compliment me on their thoroughness. “This is good work, Avery. I would have expected nothing less, of course, but everyone at the Villiger Center is singing your praises. You’ve done a great deal to ease the way for the other Strangers. I can only imagine the richness of the conversations in which you and your crewmates must be engaging.”
When I reached that line, I sighed and closed the file without reading the rest of the letter. I could imagine those conversations too. I could imagine all manner of far-ranging dialogues spanning human and Vardeshi culture, history, and philosophy. Somehow, though, I reached the end of each day without having done any more than imagine them. Most of my exchanges with my crewmates were brief and logistical. And while Sohra, Zey, and Saresh seemed receptive to discussion of the sort Dr. Sawyer was envisioning, my Vardeshi vocabulary failed me in precisely the areas I most wanted to explore. Because the lexicon used in the TrueFluent program had been drawn largely from inter-ship transmissions, it had prepared me beautifully to talk about the day-to-day operations of shipboard life. It just hadn’t prepared me to talk about anything else.
With every passing day I chafed more under the khavi’s decree. Nearly every member of the Pinion’s crew spoke excellent English. I’d heard some of them firsthand, and Zey had told me early on that the language requirement had been a component of their selection process. It infuriated me to know that the potential for real communication was there, going untapped day after day, and all because Khavi Vekesh refused to see reason. Toward the end of the third week I gathered my courage and requested two meetings: one with Saresh, one with Vekesh. Both of them accepted. I used the first meeting to prepare for the second. With the hadazi’s help, I painstakingly scripted and rehearsed an apology for my earlier transgression that segued into a renewal of my plea for a more relaxed language policy. I marshaled every defense I could think of: I was here as a cultural ambassador; I was human, with unique emotional requirements; my conduct thus far on the mission had earned me some leniency. When I’d practiced my speech to our mutual satisfaction, I closed my notebook and said, “Well, that’s the best I can do. Do you think it’s good enough? Will it convince him?”
“I think,” Saresh said slowly, “that those are two different questions. I think you’re able to articulate your points in a way you couldn’t do”—he glanced at his flexscreen—“an hour and a half ago. I believe that time was well spent. But I don’t think you’ll change his mind. And I’d be doing you a disservice if I sent you to that meeting thinking anything else.”
“Do you think he’s still angry about the last time?”
“I doubt it. Vekesh is a reasonable man. He’ll give you a fair hearing.”
I could feel the beginnings of a headache, two pinpoints of white-hot pressure at my temples. “If this doesn’t work, what am I supposed to do?”
“Accept it,” Saresh said simply.
I looked at him, trying to read some shadow of the thoughts that lay behind those tranquil features. “Is that what you would do?”
“Yes.”
“But do you think it’s fair?”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s fair. This is what you signed on for. This is what makes you a novi. It’s not brewing senek, or laundering uniforms, or wearing one. It’s following your khavi’s orders without hesitation. Everyone’s loyalty is tested at one time or another. Yours is being tested right now.”
“I just . . . don’t even really know what it is I’m being asked to be loyal to.”
Saresh collapsed his flexscreen and slipped it back into his sleeve. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You don’t have to be a novi to go to Vardesh Prime.”
My meeting with Khavi Vekesh took place on the evening of that same day, the last day of my third week. I had been steeling myself for a cold and uncomfortable interlude, but he was civil enough. I did exactly as Saresh had instructed me. I remained standing, hands clasped behind my back, in a show of deference even after I’d been offered a seat. I kept my facial expression neutral and my voice soft. While I was speaking, Vekesh divided his attention between me and his flexscreen, on which he made intermittent notes. I couldn’t tell whether they had any connection to what I was saying, but I didn’t really care; it was a relief to be spared the intensity of his full attention. I thought I delivered my message well. My tones were note-perfect. When I had finished, I studied the khavi’s remote expression and tried to anticipate what his response would be.
Saresh’s prediction had been accurate. Vekesh thanked me for following proper procedure and for bringing the matter directly to him rather than rallying support among the crew, but he refused to reconsider his decision. He ticked off my reasons on his fingers as he countered them. “Your real work as a cultural emissary will begin on Vardesh Prime, and these six months on the Pinion will be better spent honing your language skills. Your schedule has been generously adjusted to give you time to fulfill your species-specific needs—you have an additional day of rest every week. And while your work as a novi has been satisfactory, surely you’re not arguing that you deserve special treatment for fulfilling the minimum requirements of your position. The policy stands. I won’t discuss it with you again. Is that clear?”
There was nothing I could do but agree. I’d already made every argument I could think of, and even if I’d been able to produce another one on the spot, I wouldn’t have known how to phrase it. I said, “Yes, Khavi,” and when his eyes remained on his flexscreen, I quietly made my exit.
I tried to take Saresh’s advice. I tried to accept it. At meals and briefings I listened until my mind refused to process another word. I filled my first spiral-bound notebook with dubiously organized vocabulary lists and started another one. Words cascaded over me, a torrent of them seemingly without end, hammering against me like rain. There were moments of exquisite clarity when I understood nearly every word in a sentence or an anecdote. One evening in the lounge I happened to be sitting near Ziral when she was telling Ahnir and Khiva a story about getting accidentally drunk at her first officers’ dinner. The next day, certain that she was on the verge of demotion, she’d been shocked to be invited back the next week to reprise her collection of off-color Institute jokes. When she reached the punchline, I laughed with the others. Ziral shot me a look so startled it was like she’d forgotten I was there.
Those moments were rare. More common were the ones in which the machinery of comprehension ground to a halt and I came completely unmoored in the sentence I was listening to or, worse, saying. The first time it happened, I was asking Sohra how to capture an image with my flexscreen. I was hunting for a word—something banal, like folder—when my mind went blank and I lost not only that word but all of them. For an instant I thought I was having a stroke. I couldn’t conjure up any language at all: not Vardeshi, not English, nothing. Sohra must have seen the panic in my eyes. She called for Saresh, who arrived in an instant with Hathan close behind him. More flustered than I’d ever seen her or any other Vardeshi, Sohra started telling them what had happened. At first her explanation sounded like static, but halfway through, the words clicked inexplicably into focus again. I raised my hands and tried to tell them that it was over and I was all right. At the sound of my voice their eyes widened. I replayed the words I’d just said and realized that they weren’t English or Vardeshi, but an impenetrable tangle of both languages. That night I dreamed in Vardeshi for the first time.
If the immersion had been confined to language, I would have had no trouble with it. I’d learned most of my Mandarin in mainland China. I had loved the experience of being enveloped in the gray fog of ignorance, with illumination breaking through at first in glints—a word here and there—and then in fragments—phrases and half-sentences—and finally in complete utterances. The progression from my first labored attempts at communica
tion to the virtuosic thrill of naturally paced speech had been electrifying. But for all the strangeness of the language, the world I inhabited had been familiar. That wasn’t the case now. It wasn’t just the environmental factors. It was the fact that living on an alien ship meant negotiating technologies that had been engineered over millennia on a different planet: not just computer panels, but chairs, faucets, and forks. Daily life was an infinite series of tiny, infuriating puzzles. I was continually reaching for objects that weren’t there: door handles, light switches, drawer knobs. Most of these functions were replaced on the Pinion by touch-sensitive panels, but their settings were hardwired into the mechanisms themselves and couldn't be altered in any way. Naturally, the panels were designed for Vardeshi hands. Their response to mine was temperamental. Sometimes the lights or the water just didn’t turn on, and I would stand there inanely stroking the wall until something happened. And people were forever walking into me from behind because I kept stopping short in front of closed doors that stubbornly refused to open.
Eating was especially challenging. Instead of knives and forks, the Vardeshi used a tool that was like a combination fork and knife, with two fine serrated prongs, for cutting and piercing. There was another tool, like the blunt end of a chopstick, for holding the food in place. Although the Vardeshi were fully ambidextrous, as Zey had told me, some actions were designated for the left or the right hand. The cutting tool was held in the right hand, always. As a left-handed person, this took some negotiating. And there was an etiquette to the wrist angles that was entirely lost on me. I didn’t have the mental bandwidth for it. I was too busy knocking things off my plate onto the table and trying to discreetly scoop them up before anyone noticed. For the most part, my crewmates—even Vethna—seemed to respect the effort I was making, and the mocking comments I expected didn’t materialize. As the days passed, my dexterity with the Vardeshi utensils improved. But when I was especially tired or hungry or exasperated, I used a fork. I hadn’t realized the association was so apparent until I set my tray down on the table one night at dinner. Before I’d even sat down, Khiva said, “Long day, Novi?”
“I—what?” I said blankly.
Sohra, who was sitting next to her, nodded at the fork lying next to my macaroni and cheese. “No kevet tonight.”
The kevet was the two-pronged cutting tool. I looked from my tray to the two of them. Sohra read my expression and said quickly, “It’s not what you think. We haven’t been watching you—or not you in particular. It’s just living in close quarters. We know each other’s habits. Zey would rather eat leftover dinner than breakfast food. Ziral drinks hot water instead of tea. And you use your . . . Earth kevet when you’re having a difficult day.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said. But as I took my first effortless bite of macaroni I thought that, despite Sohra’s reassurance, it was very clear that I was being watched. Without obvious antipathy, perhaps, but watched nonetheless.
For the balance of that first month I struggled to find my footing. Instead of the improvement I expected, it actually felt like I was getting worse at everything: speaking Vardeshi, completing my work, navigating my flexscreen. I knew I wasn’t imagining the decline, because I made more mistakes in the fourth week than I had in the first. After the worst day—when I’d delivered three loads of clean laundry to the wrong rooms, forgotten a meeting with Sohra, spent twenty minutes trying to access a storage room that turned out to be an airlock, and spilled brandy at officers’ dinner—Saresh pulled me aside for a meeting. He was gentle and tactful, but I broke down in panicky tears the moment he asked me what was wrong.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I said, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. “I think it’s too hard. I think my brain can’t handle it.”
He was studying something on his flexscreen, and he tilted it so I could see it too. “Daskar sent this to me. It’s a description of a known phenomenon associated with interstellar travel. Our psychiatrists call it environment shock. Apparently it was commonplace when we first started traveling to other planets. Explorers who found themselves in radically different surroundings would experience a minor decline in cognitive function as their bodies adjusted to the new living conditions.”
“That seems counterintuitive,” I said. “In a stressful situation, shouldn’t the brain be the first priority?”
“You might think so. But our records suggest the opposite.” He skimmed through the document. “This is encouraging. It suggests that if what you’re going through is in fact environment shock, it’s more of a temporary glitch than a long-term problem. You should come out of it fairly quickly. Presuming, of course, that the diagnosis is accurate, and that your physiology responds to a new environment in a similar way to ours.”
“But this environment isn’t radically different from mine.” I waved a hand at the room around us. “A little different, sure, but nothing like what you’re talking about—fifty percent gravity or a totally different light spectrum.”
“True. But Daskar thinks the language component counts as an environmental factor.”
I couldn’t disagree. “So how long did this . . . environment shock last for the Vardeshi explorers?”
“A few days. A week or two at most.”
I tried to remember when I had begun feeling like this—like I was endlessly driving through fog with broken windshield wipers. When had the grayness settled over me? The end of my first week? “If you’re right, then even if you double that time—which seems reasonable, since everything takes me twice as long as it takes you guys—it should be almost over.” I sighed. “I really hope you’re right. I don’t want to be stuck like this forever.”
“You won’t be. Give it a few more days. If things don’t get better, we can talk about lightening your workload to see if that makes a difference.” I made a face, and he said, “Well, you have to admit, it’s a good thing Hathan came along before you got that airlock open.”
“Yeah. I guess.” I cringed inwardly at the memory. Even the normally imperturbable suvi had betrayed alarm at the sight of me doggedly punching my access code into the airlock keypad. He had stepped in front of me and disabled the panel with a single swift movement, saving the explanation for afterward. At first I had simply been relieved that he had prevented me from depressurizing the ship. The embarrassment had come later.
Saresh said, “You think it would have been better if you’d opened a hatch into deep space?”
“I think it would have been better if someone else had come along. Anyone else.”
“Why?”
Under his mildly interested gaze I cast around for the right words. “Hathan just always seems to catch me at my worst. I don’t know if I actually make more mistakes in front of him, or if he’s just more conscientious about pointing them out. Either way, at this point, he definitely thinks I’m stupid. Or, you know, suicidal.”
“I doubt it,” said Saresh, still studying me thoughtfully.
I changed the subject. “So, how long can you give me? Before we have to talk about . . . a workload adjustment?”
“We’ll reevaluate at the end of the week.”
I nodded and pledged silently that I would snap myself out of environmental shock, the fourth-week blues, or whatever this was by sheer force of will if necessary.
Luckily it didn’t come to that. A couple of days after my conversation with Saresh, the fog seemed suddenly to lift. I awoke on the last morning of the fourth week feeling light, energized, and clearheaded. The higher gravity didn’t drag at me the way it had before, and the lights didn’t trouble my eyes. The world seemed bright and crisp. On my way to breakfast I noticed things I hadn’t before: scuff marks on the floor, a subtle pattern on the wall of a corridor I’d walked down every day. The door to the mess hall opened for me on the first try. Later, at morning briefing, I asked Zey about a word in the agenda I didn’t recognize, only to learn that it was a typographical error. “I didn’t even see that,” he said, sounding surprised. Th
e day continued as it had begun. I moved through the morning’s tasks without error and with growing assurance. At lunch I had an odd moment of vertigo as I listened to Ahnir tell a meandering story about an ongoing miscommunication with the resupply officer at Arkhati Starhaven. At some point I forgot that he wasn’t speaking English. The sensation lasted only an instant, but it was distracting. Officers’ dinner that night was exactly as tedious as the other two I’d attended, but I played my role—menial as it was—to perfection. Khavi Vekesh actually nodded to me on his way out, the only hint of approbation he had ever shown me. When I’d finished cleaning up, I went to the mess hall and did something I had been longing to do for the last month: I cracked open a celebratory beer. The slump was over. I had acclimated to life on the Pinion.
It was around that time that things started to go wrong.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My newfound clarity of perception had its drawbacks. One of them was that I now had attention to spare for the attitudes and humors of my crewmates. The physical climate of the Pinion was controlled with pinpoint accuracy by the ship’s systems, but the emotional climate was constantly shifting. The changes were subtler than they would have been in a group of ten humans, but I was growing attuned to them now. And after a few days of observation I knew one thing for certain: Zey was lonely.
Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book 1) Page 19