by K. W. Jeter
Still, the youth had innate potential; it was a shame to see it squandered. When his mission was over, and the slaves returned to the service of their masters, he would have to consider making a recommendation to the induction committee of the high council. Perhaps an exception could be made on Buck’s behalf; he could be given the chance—a slim one, and almost certainly lethal if he failed—to try and become a warrior. A Chekkah.
“Whoa . . .” Buck leaned over, hands on knees, panting for breath. His muscles and lung power had been exerted to their limits over the last several minutes; Ahpossno could see the boy’s twin hearts laboring in his chest. “Gotta take a break.”
“Oh?” The words amused Ahpossno. “Is that what you would say to your enemy? ‘Please wait a moment, so that I may kill you when I have regained my strength’?”
“Well . . .” Buck had sat down on the grass. He managed a smile. “I’m not planning on actually killing anyone.”
“But you must be prepared to.” Ahpossno kept his voice stern. “Have you forgotten already? There are those here—the humans—who would have welcomed your death. And the death of all those who are beloved of you.”
Buck nodded slowly, the admonition sinking deep into his thoughts. He looked up at Ahpossno. “My father says that on Tencton, a warrior would fight for his Serdsos.”
“That is correct. It was the ultimate challenge—to take another’s life . . . and soul.”
“Did you ever do that?”
He weighed whether to answer Buck’s question. Then decided that at this point in bringing the youth under his influence, mystery would be more valuable.
“Let me see your form again.” Ahpossno gestured for him to rise. “Again!”
As Buck scrambled to his feet and assumed the initial fighting posture, the thoughts inside his head were visible to Ahpossno. The ones that he had planted there. Like seeds in receptive soil, they would spread their roots, then blossom forth in their dark glory.
“From your center . . . gather it there, and feel it . . .”
She paused to catch her breath. All morning long, she had been moving the pieces of the living room around, working by careful trial and error to find the arrangement that best showed the Tenctonese values of tranquillity and slafthah. She’d once heard that word translated into English as ‘homefulness’; the earth language had nothing more exact than that.
Susan stepped back to the living room’s entrance, studying the results so far. This was an art, the subtle flow of shapes and empty space, the leading of the eye and mind and soul from one restful point to another. The only thing she’d found in earth culture to compare with it was the Japanese ikebana, the meaning-laden arranging of flowers, eloquent beyond the crude limits of words. Before the coming of Ahpossno, and the rediscovery of her own culture that he had motivated, she had entertained the notion of redoing the whole house with an Oriental motif. Not the crude red and black lacquer of tourist shops, but the stark simplicity of a Zen garden. If they had to adopt the humans’ ways, as her husband wished, there was still no need to swallow whole every bit of clutter and junk, to try and shove it down her own and the children’s throats.
That would have been one way to go . . . but this was better. And truer. She gazed with approval at the bright-colored walls, the splashes of red and blue, and yellow the tone of the sun’s heart. Her kids had shown more enthusiasm than expertise in getting the paint up—the carpet had gotten flecked with dots around the baseboards—but that could be tidied later. The important thing was to make it a Tenctonese home. Slafthah.
Outside, in the backyard, Ahpossno and her son were still occupied with their martial arts practice. She could hear their muffled voices. Yesterday Buck had pitched in with helping her move all the human-styled furniture out front for the Disabled Veterans truck to pick up. The new pieces, the hand-crafted benches and low tables of traditional Tenctonese design, had been delivered the same day—and she hadn’t even had to pay extra for that. The craftsman she’d located in the downtown warehouse district, using the phone number from his small ad in the back pages of Lex nas Mislan—Faith and Family, the Journal of Tenctonese Culture, was a true believer, close to a Celinite priest in his devotion to the old ways. He’d even had a little band of disciples, young men using time-worn hand tools to shape and tame the wood of this adopted planet. George had been a little startled when he’d come home, seeing the transformation of the house. He’d even groused a bit, longing for the overstuffed ease of the human-styled sofa. But that had all been a gruff show; he’d eventually admitted that the Tenctonese pieces were comfortable to his spine, and unexpectedly restful to his eyes.
She knew that a little tension had sprung up between George and their guest. She wasn’t sure why it had happened; the two of them had seemed so friendly when George had first brought Ahpossno to their home. Perhaps, as she had so often feared, George’s career as a police detective had affected him in deeper, hidden ways, made him suspicious and uncharitable . . . humanlike, in fact. Had his hearts changed, as much as his speech and habits, to something that was no longer Tenctonese?
And then there was the matter of Buck. Another worry—she had noted the admiration their son showed for Ahpossno. An Udara was a hero to their people. And until they had washed ashore on this planet, George had been a slave among other slaves, a thing to be used and then discarded when its value was exhausted. In a very real way, the humans had made it possible for George to become a man among them. But had he ever been a hero to his own son? She supposed it was only natural that George would come to resent the tie being forged between Buck and Ahpossno.
The sound of the doorbell interrupted her thoughts, which had started out as bright as the freshly painted walls and then drifted into something darker. She turned away from the living room and went to answer.
Their next-door neighbor stood on the porch, holding a covered dish in her hands. “Hi, Penny . . .” Susan held the door open wider and smiled.
“Susan . . .” The human woman’s eyes widened in surprise as the bright new colors inside the house leapt out at her. “Goodness . . . what happened?”
“Oh, that.” Susan glanced over her shoulder, then back to the neighbor. “Nothing—I’ve just redecorated. That’s all.”
“Yes . . . I can tell.” Penny tried to cover her momentary confusion. “It’s certainly very . . . festive. Oh, and look at you!” She stepped back, making a show of admiring Susan’s gown. “Is it a Newcomer holiday?”
A shake of the head. “No—just . . . traditional garb. It makes a change.”
“It certainly does. All that color . . . I could never—” The woman’s face brightened. “Well, anyway, it’s just lovely. Here . . .” She took the dish towel off the plate and held it up. “I brought you these. There’s some fresh raw sweetbreads there . . . gizzards . . . hearts . . .” She pointed to each in turn.
“How thoughtful of you . . .” Susan took the plate and held it up to her face, inhaling deeply. “Mmmm. They smell wonderful.” She gestured toward the living room behind her. “Would you like to come in? I could make some coffee.” She always kept a small supply on hand of the little baked goods that humans enjoyed, throwing out the old, uneaten ones and buying fresh every week or so. She and George had both expected to do more entertaining in their new neighborhood, but it had somehow never really come about.
“Thanks, but I don’t have time. Howard and I have put the house up for sale and we’re showing it today.”
“Oh, you’re moving . . .” She had hardly ever talked to the woman, but they had at least been friendly enough to wave hello to each other. “I didn’t know.” She had been so busy inside the house the last few days; she looked past Penny and saw a realtor’s sign posted in the neighbors’ yard.
“Yes—it’s a great neighborhood; we’ll be sorry to leave it.” The last of the human’s smile faded. “Susan, you know some people have this terrible prejudice. I’m not like that—really. Some of my best friends are Tenc
tonese. That’s what makes this so difficult . . .”
“What?”
“I know it sounds awful, but . . . could you keep your kids inside this afternoon?”
Puzzled, Susan stared at the other woman. “Inside?”
“And if you don’t need to go outside . . .” Penny shook her head. “This is really hard for me . . .” She took a deep breath, steeling herself. “It’s just that if people thought they might be buying a house next to Newcomers . . . Well, you understand.”
“Yes,” said Susan coldly, “I do understand. Get out of my house.” She thrust the plate into the other woman’s hands. “And take this.”
“Susan, believe me, this isn’t personal—”
The fury burst from her. “Get out!”
She slammed the door shut as the human woman retreated to the sidewalk. Leaning back against the door, eyes squeezed shut, she heard her daughter Emily come bouncing down the stairs from her bedroom.
“Who was that?”
“Just a neighbor.” Susan pulled herself together. The sharp edge of anger dulled inside her, replaced by disgust and feelings too deep to name.
Emily slid past her, reaching for the doorknob. “I’m hungry—I’m gonna go get some fresh ivy.” In her other hand she held the pruning shears.
She stopped her daughter with a hand to her shoulder. “Emily . . .”
“What?”
“Take the ivy from the backyard.”
“I hate the ivy from the backyard.” Emily wrinkled her nose. “There’s no snails in it.”
“Emily, please . . .”
The girl gave a huge sigh. “Gawd, Mom—what’s your problem?”
Rolling her eyes upward, Emily tromped toward the back door. She didn’t see the tears welling in her mother’s eyes.
He always left the car parked in the house’s driveway. When they had first moved here, there had been plenty of space in the garage; he could remember planning to put in a work area along one wall, a whole rack of power tools, keep a little space for a weight bench for himself and his son to use . . .
That had been a long time ago. A couple years, George realized as he locked the car and headed for the front door. It was amazing to think of how quickly the garage had filled up—there were boxes in there; he had no idea what was in them. Perhaps Susan knew. If nothing else, it showed how much like the humans in the neighborhood they had become; at most of the houses on the blocks around them, the family cars had been squeezed out into the open.
“Hello . . .” George pushed open the door, pocketing his set of keys. “I’m home . . .”
In the living room, his daughter Emily furiously paced back and forth, her arms folded across her chest, her face set in a scowl.
“Hi, Emily.” He set his briefcase, with the files he’d brought back from the station, on the Tenctonese-styled bench that had replaced the sofa. “What’s—”
“Mom’s making us move away.” Emily stopped pacing and turned her angry glare straight at him.
“She’s doing what?” The announcement startled him. He tried to smile. “Really, Emily, I don’t think—”
“You talk to her if you don’t believe me.” She pointed to the doorway. “She’s in the kitchen.” Her shout, close to tears, followed him as he walked past her. “I’m not going to leave my friends! I’ll go live with Jill!”
The sight in the kitchen rocked him back on his heels. The floor and counters were strewn with cardboard boxes; he recognized some of them from the garage. Susan was packing dishes into them, crumpling newspapers for padding, her face set with determined anger. His son was there as well, on the stepladder, handing things down from the top shelves of the cupboards.
“Susan . . .”
She whirled on him as soon as she heard his voice. “Our ‘neighbor’ Penny came by today.” The emphasis on the one word made it sound like an obscenity. “She asked us to stay inside. She didn’t want us to scare off people who might want to buy her house.”
“Penny? Next door?” George pointed with his thumb. He shook his head. “That woman’s a fool—she always has been. And her husband. Remember when—”
“It’s not just Penny. It’s all of them!” Fire sparked in Susan’s eyes. “They tried to exterminate us, George!” She managed to bring her voice down, the words taut with her barely suppressed rage. “We don’t belong here. We can paint the walls, we can do whatever we want—but we can never make this house our home. Not with these . . . these people all around us.”
“Mom got us into one of those Newcomer-only towns.” Buck got off the stepladder and leaned back against the counter. “That’s what she figured we should—”
“Segregation is not the answer.” His son’s flat, controlled statement triggered George’s own anger. “It never has been!”
“But we’ll be safe. Don’t you see?” Susan stepped closer to him. “We won’t need to depend on humans. Tenctonese will take care of Tenctonese.”
“Susan, the world is too small for that! Human and Tenctonese—we’re connected now. Our lives are intertwined! We have to learn to live together.”
“I tried living with Terts.” Scorn twisted Buck’s voice. “It doesn’t work. Ahpossno says we should just be with our own people.”
“Ahpossno!” George’s anger flared beyond his control. “He’s been in the desert for six years! What does he know?”
“I know that life without the humans is possible.”
George turned and saw Ahpossno standing in the doorway from the living room. The other man’s face was a rigid, emotionless mask.
“He hasn’t been polluted by them!” Buck’s arm shot out, his outstretched hand pointing toward Ahpossno. “He’s still a Tenctonese!”
“You mean I’m not? Is that it?” George looked away from his son, and back to Ahpossno. “Ever since the day you came, you’ve been turning us against one another. You’re trying to destroy this family—”
Susan grabbed hold of his arm. “Don’t blame him for what the humans have done!”
He shook himself free from her grasp. He studied the two of them, their betrayal squeezing his hearts into cold, aching ice. The angry words echoed in his skull. He steadied himself with an effort of will, summoned from deep inside himself.
“When you were on Yderon mining doxite—” he regarded Ahpossno, keeping his voice to the pace of careful, controlled discussion “—didn’t you depend on other species then?”
Ahpossno returned his gaze without blinking. “That was Yderon.”
Susan broke in. “What does that have to do with us?”
He turned toward his wife. “There were no doxite mines on Yderon.” Looking back to Ahpossno, he saw the other man’s eyes narrow with the realization of the simple trap he had fallen into. “I don’t know who you really are, but I want you out of my house by tomorrow.”
“That won’t change anything.” Susan spoke to Buck: “Go pack Vessna’s things.”
His face grim, Buck pushed his way out of the kitchen, past Ahpossno and Emily, who had come up behind him.
The space between George and his wife had seemed to turn into miles, a gap so wide, he couldn’t reach across to her. “I can’t stop you, Susan—but I’m not leaving. It’s against everything I believe in.”
In the doorway, Emily choked back a sob. “I want to stay here with Dad.”
“I’m a Tenctonese mother.” Susan’s voice became like steel. “All my children go with me.” She picked up one of the boxes, turning to hide her face from him. “I love you, George. I hope you change your mind.” She carried the box out the connecting door to the garage.
Emily rushed into the kitchen, clutching her father around the waist, her tears soaking into the thin cloth of his shirt. He tried to comfort her, his hand stroking the side of her head. Looking up, he locked in to Ahpossno’s gaze. In silence broken only by the child’s crying, the two men stared with implacable fury into each other’s eyes.
C H A P T E R 3 0
HE STARED AT the computer screen, then tapped a few more keys. “Damn . . .”
Sikes leaned back in his chair and flipped the pencil he’d been holding; it bounced off the monitor and fell to the floor. He leaned to one side in order to see his partner. “Big zip, George. The search program went through all the Los Angeles data bases last night, and came up with nothing. And now I’ve gone through all of Orange County, and I still can’t come up with any leads on that silicate.” He rubbed his chin. “Maybe that gaminite stuff doesn’t have any industrial use. You found anything on it?”
There was no reply. George sat gazing morosely at his own computer. The same way he’d been for the last half hour.
“George, look—Susan’s gonna change her mind. I know she will. She can’t live without you. She’ll get out there, to whatever the place is called . . . and then she’ll want to come right back. Trust me. That’s how these things work.”
“I don’t know, Matthew.” George’s expression became even bleaker. “I just don’t know . . .”
Just great, thought Sikes. They were supposed to be getting some work done here, and his partner’s marriage had to go belly-up. That was about the last thing he would have expected to happen. He had always felt that Susan and George’s marriage was a given, like the law of gravity. You don’t wake up in the morning and find yourself floating on the ceiling, and you don’t come in to the station and hear that Ol’ Reliable’s wife and kids were rolling with their suitcases and the family toaster to some Newcomer-only development out in the boonies.
What really made him feel like ten pounds of mandrill dung was thinking back on all the concern and pep talks that George had thrown his way, over his own involvement with Cathy. Right now he didn’t know if all of it had wound up accomplishing much—if he let it, the memory of that last get-together with her could put him all the way to the floor beside George—but still . . . he supposed it was the thought that counted. And so what was he telling George, in his hour of trouble? Don’t worry, she’ll come back—hell, he didn’t know if she would or not. It was hard enough figuring out what human women were going to do.