by Chloe Garner
And then, on one of the sons - the names had all escaped him immediately - Troy noticed a subtle pattern that ran alongside the main, bolder pattern. It was fainter, pinkish, where the main pattern was bright red, and it was inconsistent where the main pattern was geometrically perfect.
Troy turned his eyes down when the Gana caught him looking, finally getting the cobalt utensil into the first piece of the meal and pulling it free, then he looked back up at the younger Gana.
It was makeup.
They were wearing makeup.
Absently, he put his first bite into his mouth, and with shock, found that it dissolved on his tongue like a sugary confection, but with the solid taste of a much heavier meat. There was a rainbow of flavor, bitter, sour, salt, herb, and the appetite-pleasing feel of oil, and then a new wave hit him, salty and tangy like an un-sweet citrus.
He realized he still had the utensil in his mouth, and he tried to put it back down onto the table as gracefully as he could, but the Gana whose deformed patterning had caught his attention was watching him.
“It’s very good,” Troy said.
“Likely the best you will ever sample,” the Gana answered, casting a look at Cassie that Troy couldn’t decipher, then returning to his own meal.
Troy was falling behind, and he paused to watch Cassie as she used the red tool to secure her next bite.
“We welcome visitors to Minan Gartal,” Kron was saying. “We know, obviously, that the time of the Gana has passed, but we still in our hearts feel that it is our city.”
“It must be hard to watch as it grows on without you,” Cassie answered.
“Not at all,” Kron said. “It had a great destiny that could have never been fulfilled without younger, faster species to carry it forward.”
“I see,” Cassie said, taking a moment of silence as she chewed.
Troy’s next bite was briny, with a cool texture like calamari or oyster. He wasn’t a fan of uncooked seafood, in general, and this was one he would have passed on the rest of the plate, if there had been more. It uncurled off of the utensil in his mouth like a living creature, which gave him pause, but it lay still long enough after that that he went ahead and swallowed, setting down the red tool and watching Cassie for which one to do next. He wondered if there would be real food at some point, as it was becoming apparent to him that this was going to take as much energy to consume as he was going to get out of having done so.
“My friends have never been here before,” Cassie said after another minute. I’m sure they would love to hear the history of the Gana.”
“It’s hardly the story of a single mealtime,” Kron answered her, and she shrugged.
“I find most stories can be told in that time, if you know what’s important about them,” she said. Again, Troy found nothing in Kron’s face to give away what the Gana was thinking.
“Glabe,” Kron said finally. “Why don’t you tell them the story?”
There was a studied silence as the table turned to the second male from Kron. Troy sneaked a glance at Cassie, but he was hopelessly behind on the yellow implement. He put it back down to wait for the next one.
Glabe looked at his father, then put his own utensils down in a moment of reflection, then turned to look directly at Troy. Troy tried not to squirm.
“To sit at a Gana’s table is a rare honor in these days,” Glabe started. “Dining is a rare indulgence in the modern era, because the Gana have transcended the need to consume the bodies of other living beings in order to function. We have certain minerals that we take from the ground directly, but all other needs are met through passive sources.”
“Like being shot with projectiles,” Cassie added conversationally. The table collectively turned to look at her, now, but she seemed oblivious, skewering the next part of her meal.
“Among other sources,” Glabe said, clearly put out at being interrupted. “We have become the most evolved species in the known universe, and while we can still partake of common food when we choose, we do so only at ceremonies of the greatest importance.”
“So why now?” Cassie asked, moving her forks faster and faster as her food disappeared more quickly. Her dexterity was a bit intimidating, and Troy stopped watching her for now, instead watching the seven Gana across the table from him.
“We have a Palta among us,” Kron answered. “When the universe has taken to believe that Palta are functionally extinct.”
“Functionally extinct,” Cassie scoffed. “Soft words.”
Glabe clicked his teeth and attention returned to him.
“We weren’t always so evolved,” he said, tapping two fingers on the table. Troy thought it looked like nerves. “The planet around us has always been an ample environment, but the king of the Gana once had fierce competition for the vast power that he held. We are a gifted race for the fierce history we’ve been through and for the vastness of the resources available to us.”
“The same is true of many species,” Cassie observed.
“Yes, but how many of them stand on the hill by themselves?” Glabe answered. Cassie laughed over a spoon-shaped utensil, not looking up.
“How worthy a distinction,” she said. “To end up all alone.”
The noises Troy heard were growls, but he couldn’t find the exact source of them. None of the Gana moved. Cassie looked up, passive and amused.
“Please, though. This is not the history of the Gana. It is the legend. You speak of yourselves as if you are as extinct as the Palta. Surely there is a story of the Gana.”
There were several more growls, but one of the women spoke, silencing the table.
“Many thousands of years ago, the warrior queen Ka stood atop the pile of skulls of her enemies and looked out over the plains of Minan Gartal,” Asp said slowly, the words dancing in a sort of musicality that only just flickered across Troy’s implant. The Gana would have been beautiful, he could tell. “The sun shone down on her and the seas grew quiet, and she knew that this was the place where she would set in motion the fate of her people.
“The Gana were a divided species, one with many kings and queens, with men and women who did not have a large enough wealth of power to be king or queen, but who ruled their small spaces, nonetheless. Ka was not a kind woman, but she was a wise one, and she knew that among the many fertile plains of the planet, one too young yet for even a name, there would rise up many people, many species, to claim them, if the Gana did not.
“And so she began her conquest of the world. Ka had many children with many men, and each of her children was fierce and loyal, standing behind her as warriors in their own rights. She sent them out like the seeds of the air, slaying kings and queens, bringing the small spaces into her realm of domain, and bringing her great success and power. But the time of the Gana was limited. It came time for Ka to die, having used the natural span of her years, and yet she did not. Such was the will of our first true queen that she turned aside death itself, claiming a throne that stretched to the ends of the earth, across the great seas, and near to the heavens themselves. She chose Kable Telk as the seat of her throne, above the great and teeming Gana city of Minan Gartal, and she lived on and on for thousands of years, watching as her children and her children’s children brought the world under her dominion.
“In the final battle, she went forth with her descendants onto the field of the battle and she won great glory. Again she stood on the pile of the skulls of her foes, and she saw the great fields of the earth stretching out before her. Nothing could stand before the will of the Gana, and she knew that her work was done. She breathed out her light in a great flash, giving her daughters a final gift of great power within their bodies themselves, and setting us on our path to freedom from all outside powers. We were no longer ever to be endangered by the threat of physical force, but we could still be starved, or driven from life by thirst, frozen to death or burnt by flame. Ka’s final gift to the Gana was the legacy that would make us what we are today. Her power saw the path
forward in which there would be no threat that could stand before us.”
There was a space of two breaths of silence.
“Now that’s a story,” Cassie said.
“My daughter studies,” Kron said after another moment. “She knows many of the stories our people have told, down through the years.”
“It shows,” Cassie said. “That was very well told. A perfect recitation, I expect.”
Asp looked at the table.
“The Gana have many notable poets, but Klee is my favorite,” she said. Cassie nodded.
“I would love to read his work in its entirety.”
There was a flicker of acknowledgment from Asp, but she did not move her eyes from the table.
“Klee is an apologist for an extinct agenda,” Barnk said.
“And a romantic,” James said.
“There’s nothing wrong with a romantic perspective,” Alk said, eyes blinking rapidly. Troy thought he saw a conviction there that might have bordered on violent, in another setting. “It reminds us of who we are.”
“Who we were,” James said.
“We are beyond the Gana that we were when Klee was alive,” Glabe said.
“It doesn’t make it any less our own history,” Alk said.
“Enough,” Kron said. “We are entertaining tonight, not boring our guests with often rehashed arguments over perspective.”
Alk snorted - Troy actually saw it - and the rest of them dropped their heads a fraction. Asp was still staring at the table.
Cassie finished her meal, the first at the table to do so, and sat back in her chair.
“It was a well-told story, and I’m grateful for it,” she said.
“Shall we have our next course, then?” Kron asked, raising an arm. Troy’s almost completely-uneaten meal vanished moments later and another circus of Gana wove in and out of the room in careful steps, crafting the next art piece in front of him. He watched with a sick anticipation as the utensils left and new, even craftier ones took their place. He sighed and he heard Cassie laugh under her breath. She turned her face a fraction toward him.
“We will eat breakfast in our rooms tomorrow morning. You can make it that long.”
He sighed, and she laughed again.
*********
The meal stretched on for hours, late into the night. Troy felt like he was being strung along, eating only just enough to keep him from feeling like he was truly hungry, but never getting enough food to fill him up. The Gana talked, Cassie talked, Troy and Olivia observed but had very little to say. The conversation was superficial for almost the entire evening, sometimes wandering into the inscrutable, bits of gossip about species from other places in the universe, or anecdotes that relied too heavily on custom or idiom for Troy to follow them.
Many hours later, drowned in conversation and food that wasn’t very food-ish, they followed a quiet escort back to their rooms. They were exhausted, and each went to their own room, presumably each of them falling asleep just as fast as Troy did.
The bed was very comfortable.
The next morning, though, his body woke alert, no transition from asleep to awake. His mind was still charged with the puzzle of thoughts from the night before, as had been his dreams. He went into the main room to find Cassie standing in front of the window drinking something that smelled hot. She turned to look at him before he thought she could have heard him.
“Morning,” she said.
“Morning,” he echoed. It felt familiar and impossible at the same time. How many mornings had he gotten up to find her drinking coffee in the kitchen? And now, on another planet…
“Soldier’s instincts,” she said, turning back to the window. “Wake up early, especially in a strange place.”
“Yeah,” Troy said. “Did you sleep well?”
“Well enough,” she said, turning with a sense of decision and going to sit in a chair. He hadn’t noticed it was a chair until she sat in it, but with that information he was able to identify half a dozen others around the room. He sat down nearby.
“So what did you think?” she asked.
He considered.
“I’m trying to keep in mind that they’re a royal family,” he said finally. “And that they live for a really long time. I’m not sure I understand them well enough to start making judgments.”
“They’re hiding something from me,” she said. Troy raised an eyebrow.
“You said that yesterday. That they didn’t want you here. Where are you getting that?”
She gave him a grim, distant smile, then shook her head and went to a table, bringing back a cup of whatever it was she was drinking.
“Breakfast will be here soon,” she said.
“Why do you think they’re hiding something?” he asked.
“Little things and big things,” she answered. He tried his drink, finding it bitter and hot, but filling, better than anything he’d had the night before for food quality. He took a careful sip - it was really hot - then waited for her to go on. She finally cracked, smiling down at her drink. “They kept us occupied all night,” she said. “None of them wanted to be there, but they stayed.”
“And it isn’t just because they don’t all agree on how important you are?” Troy asked. She shook her head.
“No, they can’t stand to be in the same room together, most of them. That’s how important I am. But they got bored and Kron kept them sitting there all that time, just to keep us from leaving.”
“Are they trying to keep us here?” he asked, his body stiffening slightly as he reviewed exit paths again. She laughed.
“Oh, no. They’d love if we just left. What they don’t want is for us to have free time. They don’t want me wandering.”
“Which is exactly what you want to do,” Troy finished. She grinned wider.
“Of course.”
He nodded.
“Of course.”
“We need to find an excuse,” she said.
“That shouldn’t be that hard,” he said. She gave him a saucy smile over the rim of her cup.
“No, but they’re going to do their best.”
“This is what you did with Jesse?” he asked after a minute of quiet. She shrugged.
“This what?”
“Running around, causing problems, getting into everything?” he asked. The exact opposite of what they were supposed to be doing as part of the jumper program, he added mentally. She laughed, her posture opening up as her eyes roved over internal memories.
“We did do some of that,” she said. “Jumpers are always so afraid.” There was another long moment of memory, then she was back, her face warm, leaning out over her knees as she spoke. “Everything is with an eye to what you’re going to have to put in your report. It’s about the mission. It’s so self-conscious and so careful. The universe is more like a rubber ball than it is a glass vase.”
Troy found himself grinning with her.
“You think so?”
She nodded.
“I do. People are resilient. Everywhere you go. Sure, bad things happen, species die out…” she got quiet and distant again. “Everyone you know goes away. It can happen. You can shatter a rubber ball.” And then she was back. “But you have to be playing a pretty rough game to begin with.”
“Cassie D.C., if anyone I know plays a rough game, it’s you,” Troy said. She grinned deviously, setting spark to tinder in his core that he hadn’t realized was there.
“I do,” she said. “You know, all that time I was out with Jesse, I wanted to show you all this. That you were just… stuck. On Earth. With just pinholes for looking at the universe through.” She shook her head. “Not everyone deserves this, but I wanted you to be here.”
“And so I am,” he said. The grin flashed again.
“And so you are.”
She dipped her face down to her drink, and he sipped his own, finding his eyes unable to leave hers.
Olivia yawned.
He jerked, realizing just how f
ar out over his seat he was sitting, as close to Cassie as he could get.
“Morning,” he said.
“Hi,” she said. He got up and went to her, kissing her forehead, which immediately felt wrong.
“Is there actual food today?” she asked, giving him a strange look as she walked past him into the room. He shook himself and went to find a new seat somewhere less dangerous.
“Breakfast will be here soon,” Cassie said. “I sent an order with Ajilla that should cover your nutritional needs pretty well.”
“Last night was interesting,” Olivia said, accepting a mug from Cassie.
“What did you observe?” Cassie asked. Olivia smiled, hiding her mouth behind her hand.
“Is it a test?”
“Maybe,” Cassie said with a straight face and a wink. Olivia laughed.
“They really don’t have to eat in order to survive?” she asked.
“Or drink,” Cassie said.
“I find that fascinating,” Olivia said.
“But not directly observed,” Cassie said. “What did you observe?”
Olivia frowned.
“Well, none of them like each other,” she said. “Why is that?”
“You saw as much as I did,” Cassie said. “What do you think?”
“How does succession work?” Olivia asked.
“I don’t know,” Cassie said, “but that’s an interesting question.”
Olivia nodded.
“There just felt like a lot of power dynamic going on that didn’t make any sense.”
“No,” Cassie agreed. “It didn’t.”
“It’s not like they’re jockeying for something, trying to outdo each other. And I don’t think any of the men care what Kron thinks of them. Not like he’s going to be the one to choose his successor.”
“Go on,” Cassie said, nodding. Olivia shook her head.