by Bob Mauldin
Rentec walked into his quarters to find Ramannie looking out the windows at the Stala’s in all their glory as the sun shed its last light on their peaks. “What brings you here?” he asked more brusquely than he normally would.
“I came to see my betrothed,” she answered with asperity, “and to get some answers. Do you realize that since you moved out here, we’ve seen each other only for social functions that you couldn’t get out of? If you’d rather that I leave...”
“No! I just wasn’t expecting you. I’ve been so busy...”
“Doing the bidding of the matriarch and sel Garian, of course. And have you thought about me?”
“Of course,” he avowed. “I think about you constantly.”
“Enough to keep me squirreled away in a tiny apartment in Quillas for almost a full turning with no one to escort me to functions except those you choose to attend. I’m losing my standing, Rentec. The only time I get to go out in public is when I go to work. You certainly aren’t around to do your part.” Ramannie gave vent to the feelings she’d been keeping pent up for the past turning. Even in Shiravan society, and even on a wartime footing when rules were relaxed, a young woman promised as consort wasn’t allowed to be seen in public unescorted, with the exception of making her way to her workplace. And since Shiravan society had such a strong matriarchal flavor, a young woman who was kept from attending social functions for whatever reason soon fell out of sight of her equals. “When will we be joined, Rentec? Then I can attend functions with just a family retainer. Someone needs to keep the do’ Verlas name in the spotlight, else you will rise no higher than you are now. And how high have you risen, consort-to-be? I see your old mentor, Minister Foran filling your post while you hide out here. Nowhere does your name appear on any of the ministry announcements. It’s ‘Minister Foran this’ and ‘Minister Foran that’ all the time now.”
“I’m not sure just what my status is these days, Ramannie,” he confessed a bit uncomfortably. “I’m performing a vital task for the matriarch, and I can say no more on the subject.” He was all too aware that of late he’d been given no other tasks than communicating with the aliens. “It’s possible I’ve gotten too involved with what I’m doing. Perhaps a vacation is in order.”
A thought that had been floating around for a full turning came to the fore. “We can move you out to the do’ Verlas estates. It is accepted for a consort-to-be to be escorted by family members, and with so many cousins in residence, you should have no trouble getting to social events. And with my mother along, well...” He thought for a moment. “I can call and set up everything, including a time for our Matrimonial Reading. Mother has found a Reader to sit for the occasion, you know.”
Setting up the trip was a matter of two calls, one to his mother and one to Maratai, who seemed to be acting as his intermediary whenever necessary.
Rentec stood with Maratai and watched Ramannie board the suborbital. “I should be gone only a few days,” he said. “I want to try an idea that I think Dom’ Carter has been trying to get across to me. If I understand him correctly, he wants me to live with the two of them constantly, hearing and speaking nothing but their language, a process I interpret as total immersion. The concept has merit, I believe.” He said no more, as his proximity to Maratai constantly caused him to lose his focus, almost as if she were deliberately... No, he thought, she can’t possibly be interested in me. Without another word, he followed Ramannie up the ramp.
The suborbital circled the do’ Verlas estates four hundred miles to the south of Quillas. A thoroughly angered Ramannie turned to Rentec. “I thought we were going back to Quillas first! What about my clothes? My things?” she asked sharply, pulling Rentec’s arm until he turned to look at her. “I have only what I’m wearing!”
Before she could get even more worked up, Rentec said, “I took the liberty of having your apartment boxed up and moved here. Staying here has enormous benefits socially, and to give your address as the do’ Verlas estates cannot do you any harm. Besides, once we’ve gotten the Reading out of the way, all else is just formality.” The female of any species hates to be uprooted and replanted without her knowledge, at the very least, and Ramannie proved to be no exception. Hardly mollified by the explanation, Ramannie finally consented to the abrupt change in her life literally moments before the suborbital landed.
It wasn’t until breakfast of the second day that his mother finally made an appearance. “Sorry, Rennie, I had to make arrangements for your Reading this afternoon. Rala kep Simther has agreed to officiate. Until Morath has spilled his blood across the sky, I will be in consultation with our elders.” With this pronouncement, Tira do’ Verlas, Reader Prime, gave notice as to the time and place of the Reading and swept from the room.
It was customary for Readings to be overseen by a Reader of another line who had no ties to any of the interested parties. While the empathic link established during a Reading was able to give a Reader a glimpse into the future, it was the overseer who kept the Reader tied to impartiality. Tradition said that total ignorance of the pair being Read was best, so Rentec’s mother, an accomplished Reader herself, had to scramble to find someone to fit the equation.
Rentec commed Ramannie in her suite. It was necessary for the two to stay apart until the Reading so the Reader didn’t stumble upon the pair prematurely and taint the Reading. “Sunset at the family shrine,” he told his consort-to-be, correctly deciphering his mother’s instructions. Some Readers tended to wax poetic as their particular gift was activated. Emotions flowed close to the surface as the time for a Reading approached and hormones kicked in.
By the time the Reader got escorted into the room with the hopeful pair, she’d mastered the vagaries of her body and arrived at a state approaching catatonia. This was the condition Rentec saw his mother in for the first time in his life. He’d heard of the phenomenon, but until today, he’d never seen it. He sat there, arms around his consort-to-be and hers around him, entwining their auras as intimately as their physical bodies, and waited for the next step in the Reading.
Ramannie, for her part, sat woodenly still, posed with her intended as instructed by the overseer. Fear tingled in her like an electric current, and she ground it under a mental heel, dragging her emotions back under control.
For a time, the participants in this drama remained as if fixed in place. Then Tira do’ Verlas, leaning limply on the arm of a servant, seemed to find strength from some inner reservoir and stood alone. The servant stepped back and, hands outstretched, the Reader approached the combined auras of the pair in front of her. She recognized the cool blue (surprising!) of her firstborn instantly and rejoiced at the feeling. The lime-green aura entwined with his she didn’t recognize. Approaching, hands still outstretched, she allowed her aura to mesh with the entwined auras before her. She moved around the pair, examining them from all angles, arms around but not quite touching the supplicants. Her aura pulled one direction and then another in a dance that would, under other circumstances, seem erotic. However, presently, at sunset, surrounded by the remains of ancestors going back forty-two generations, the Reader, in her simple peasant dress, moved with grace and majesty in a dance that at its end should leave no doubt as to the rightness of this possible union.
A questioning feel began to assert itself into the dance of Tira do’ Verlas. A hesitation appeared. Time passed while the last of Morath’s blood fled from the skies, and still the two lovers sat frozen under the stars as their every aural nuance was examined. Finally tiring, Tira slowed to a stop. Her head fell forward and her arms to her side. Alarmed, the servant stepped forward to assist her, but pushing the offered arm away, she stood straight and faced her opposite number. “I can get no clear picture,” she said at last. “Never before have I seen such auras. They mesh here and not there. They combine as one in this place yet remain separate in others. What say you, Rala kep Simther?”
Called from her position on the sidelines of the event, the overseer
, equally entwined in the aural dance while it went on yet separated from it, admitted, “I see no outcome. It is as if a small part of one of these two is rejecting the other. But I cannot tell which.”
“Nor can I,” Tira said, defeated. “This must be studied.” Motioning for the seated pair to get up, she turned, distracted, and walked slowly back to the house and her rooms, leaving the others to make their uncertain ways back as best they could.
Rentec flew back to Cho-An, seething with an inner turmoil he had trouble putting a name to. Of course, he was upset by the inconclusive results of the Reading, as was his mother. She’d gone into seclusion, studying her books and aural charts, and calling other Readers to discuss the finer points of the Reading, looking for any similarities she could use to get hold of the situation. To say nothing of Ramannie. She’d suffered for at least a full turning before getting to sit for Tira, and the results were, if not shattering, at the very least disconcerting.
“What will I tell my friends?”
“Tell them the Reading was delayed,” he said testily. “Another will be done, I’m sure of it.”
It was the attitude she directed at him that made Rentec so angry. Ramannie acted as if he were personally responsible for the results. He spent the entire flight trying to put the final confrontation out of his mind and return to the business at hand, and it was with relief that he watched the compound of the matriarch come into view. At this time of morning, the gava-stone walls gave no hint of their unique properties, and all he saw were the plain grey walls of the dozens of main buildings, each with their own set of support structures, the whole somehow harmonizing and drawing the eye even without the special nature of the stone.
Maratai kep Parrasine waited at the bottom of the ramp. “How was your vacation?” she asked politely.
“A waste of effort and energy,” he said as he strode beside her to the waiting hovercar. “I would have gotten more rest if I’d walked off alone into the Stalas. I’ve heard nothing on the war front. Has there been any change in the situation?”
“We have successfully killed two more raiders, at a loss of seven ships of our own, and taken two more systems complete with their entire populations and infrastructures.”
“We need to do something to even the odds,” Rentec mused, “but what that would be, I don’t know.”
“The matriarch wants to find the homeworld of the humans,” Maratai said. “Of course, that means you need to make some kind of breakthrough.” She let the thought die. “Dinner in my quarters, tonight?” she asked quietly. “We can discuss your total immersion idea. When do you plan to start?”
“Tell Doma des Harras that I’ll begin tomorrow. I have an idea that I think will get this experiment started in the right direction.” The hovercar pulled up at the entrance to the main compound and Rentec got out, carrying his bag with him. “Dinner at the eighth hour. I will tell you my idea then.”
He tossed his bag into the sleeproom and made his way to the comm panel for the compound. Picking up a directory, he glanced through it until he found a particular listing. When a voice answered his call, he asked, “Is it possible to get a car for a camping trip with provisions for two groups of two for five days?” He listened for a moment and said, “This is Minister do’ Verlas. Have the vehicle ready tomorrow morning. I’ll take full responsibility for all damages.” Shaking his head at the pomposity of clerks and accountants, he lay down to let his body adjust to the new time zone.
The short nap adjusted Rentec’s body-clock, and he found himself knocking on the door of the kep Parrasine quarters. Actually a small compound within another compound, it supported several dozen of Maratai’s relatives at any one time.
Dinner was with all of Maratai’s clan-in-residence, and surprisingly, the matriarch was in attendance as well. Small talk kept the diners busy discussing everything from daily activities in Cho-An to Rentec’s ambivalent Reading.
“Amazing, really,” Linnas des Harras said around a mouthful. “An inconclusive Reading from Tira. And with her own son! Are you sure she is well, Rentec?”
“Tira do’ Verlas is in fine form, Linnas,” he said, using the matriarch’s first name to acknowledge the informality of the occasion. “The overseer says that one of us has some reservations but was unable to determine which of us it is. Mother is studying the situation. She sends her regards and promises a visit in the near future.”
Dinner over, Rentec followed Maratai and Linnas out onto the patio to watch the sun bring the gava stone to life for a short time as it sank out of sight. Sitting down at a low table, Linnas picked up a waiting pitcher and poured into three kemwood cups. “Now, Rentec, Maratai tells me you have an idea on how to help with your language lessons?”
Rentec waved his hand dismissively. “The idea was Dom’ Carter’s. I merely embrace it out of frustration. The concept is simple, really. I will hear nothing but their language—Eenglits, they call it—for five days. Children grow up learning to speak one word at a time. I must do the same but in considerably less time.”
“You propose to lock yourself up with them for five days?” Linna asked.
“No, Your Grace,” he said, moving back to formality. “I propose a vacation, a first for our guests and a second for me,” he added sheepishly. “I propose a camping trip into the Stalas for five days, in which no words will be spoken unless they are in Eenglits. We have often said that it would be a show of good faith to escort our guests around our world. And it would be good for the morale of our people, as well. This will be a first step in that direction, I think.”
Linnas des’ Harras twined her fingers around the cup and gazed at the mountains as the glow faded from the stone. “I will agree with this idea, Rentec. It has merit and should be tried, provided you can find someone else to go as well. The Stalas are wild, and our guests are unprepared for our world. Security comes with numbers, after all. But who would go?” she mused aloud. “It must be someone who already has knowledge of the humans, and someone who will keep a level head. Someone good in a crisis, and trustworthy, as well...”
So it was that the following morning, Maratai kep Parrasine found herself strapping on a laser pistol from a survival pack at daybreak. Her fury at being manipulated by both the matriarch and Rentec, and apparently without collusion, caused her to fumble with the fittings. And the conversation she remembered from the night before did nothing to alleviate her frustration.
“You expect me to go off into the wilderness for five days with an unattached male without a chaperon?” she had fairly yelled at him.
“I expect nothing, Maratai. And there will be two chaperons along, unless you’ve forgotten—a male to keep me in line and a female to watch you.”
“And what sleeping arrangements have you decided upon?” she had asked belligerently.
“Why, the most innocent of arrangements, really. The males will share one tent and the females the other. It will give you a chance to try the total-immersion technique, as well. You’ll be with them almost as much as I, after all. Unless you’d like to tell the matriarch you have other responsibilities? I’m sure we can find someone else.”
Now, with dawn turning the Stalas into a shimmering dreamscape, there came Rentec with the two humans in tow.
“I had a hard time explaining the purpose of the trip, but I think I got through to them,” he told Maratai cheerfully. He climbed into the driver’s seat, raised the vehicle on its repulsors, and waved his passengers into their seats.
As the floater and attached trailer moved out of Cho-An and into the Stala Mountains, Maratai said “I’m familiar with survival packs and camping trips, Rentec, but I didn’t recognize the long skinny case stuck in the back of the trailer.
“Oh, that,” he said with a smile of anticipation. “That’s my fishing pole.”
Derek and Maggie’s hope that experience in total immersion would push Rentec over the edge to understanding their language took almost the full five days Ren
tec had allotted to the experiment. The four beings had found many mutual points of contact, but a language breakthrough seemed as far away as ever until the group rounded a bend that deposited them on the edge of a high mountain meadow that Maratai had pointed out on the map. The two humans were in the lead, eager for each new visual experience on this alien world, when the silence was broken by the scream of a tortured soul.
Rentec, clawing for his laser, yelled, “Danger! Down! Now!” Derek dove for the cover of a boulder, dragging Maggie with him. Rentec’s speed was offset by his clumsiness, and two beams lanced out as one to catch the shaggy beast in mid leap. Dead before it hit the ground, the creature slid twenty feet and stopped at Derek’s feet.
“Your aim is good,” Maratai said coolly, “but your reaction time needs work. You let yourself get flustered. It could have cost your life, or worse. What was that you yelled?”
Stung by the criticism, Rentec started to respond but stopped, a thoughtful look on his face. “I think I spoke Eenglits,” he said in wonder. “Derek, Maggie,” he said to the two humans. “Danger gone. Seerka dead. We go back now.”
“Nirsa,” Derek said, using one of the few Shiravan words he and Maggie had positively identified. He tapped himself on the chest. “I came to fish, and I’m going to fish.” He made casting motions with the hastily fashioned pole in his hand, turned his back on the two Shiravans, and headed off toward the lake beckoning from the far end of the meadow.
“What did he say?” Maratai asked.
“He told me no.”
“I got that part.” Maratai’s ire showed in her voice. “I mean what else did he say?”
“He said that he came to fish, so he is going to fish.” Rentec picked up his old perlwood pole and followed the human along the path. Over his shoulder he said, “Perhaps our peoples have more in common than we thought. I feel the same way.”