The Galaxy Game

by Karen Lord

  Commander Nasiha looked at him worriedly. ‘Do you feel unwell? Perhaps you would like to vomit again? It would be best to continue this night on an empty stomach.’

  He flashed her an indignant glare. ‘I’m fine. I would better if you hadn’t tried to kill me with all the running, but I’m fine.’

  She gave an approving nod at his show of determination. ‘Come.’

  The main pier was busy and long. Several boats were moored along its lower level, but the upper level was a place of recreational talking and walking. Rafi recognised the pilots with their long hair and slightly odd gait that spoke of recent unfamiliarity with Cygnian gravity, but there were a few Sadiri settlers present, immediately identifiable by their ease with both the gravity and the environs. Then there were one or two others, most likely Cygnian though he could not guarantee it, very ordinary in appearance apart from some quirks of regional dress but bearing the same expression of wonder, confusion and excitement. They were, like him, probably seeing the place for the first time. And yet no one challenged them, no one asked where they were going and what business they had there. If there was any secret to the nocturnal activities of Grand Bay, it was hiding in plain sight – his favourite tactic.

  The Commander stopped suddenly, her attention caught by a man walking along in conversation with three pilots. It was hard to place him: if he was a pilot, his hair was too short and his stride too comfortable, but then again, his clothes were too strange for a local and his demeanour too relaxed for a newcomer. She put out a hand and touched his arm before he could pass, and he jumped, more in delight than surprise.

  ‘Commander!’ He waved the strolling pilots on with a smile and a nod, then he spoke to her in Sadiri, which Rafi knew far too little of, but his lips were slightly smiling and his eyes flitted over to Rafi once or twice in a manner that felt deliberately sly.

  ‘You are Grace Delarua’s nephew,’ he said warmly, addressing Rafi at last.

  Rafi smiled and felt a little calmer. In the settlement, at least, Grace Delarua’s nephew was a good thing to be.

  ‘I am Naraldi. Dllenahkh has told me a little about you, but not very much. Commander Nasiha has told me a little about your father, but again, not very much. Tell me, can you swim?’

  Rafi gaped, unable to find a coherent response. He had heard of Naraldi – the former Sadiri Consul, semi-retired pilot and political activist – and that was reason enough to stutter, but his paralysis had more to do with the mention of his father. Nasiha nudged him and broke the spell. ‘Yes. A bit, I mean. I’ve never swum in an ocean, only lakes and pools.’

  ‘Well, enough not to panic, at least,’ Naraldi remarked. ‘Let’s go out a little farther.’

  Rafi followed Naraldi’s loping paces. He longed for the courage to demand of Commander Nasiha why she was discussing his father with other Sadiri, but he only managed one reproachful look which she might have noticed but did not deign to acknowledge. He did not have long to brood over it. They soon reached a part of the pier that swayed with the currents, its structure tethered by cables to a distant ocean floor. A warm, moist blast of air blew across their path with the briskness of a sneeze and a loud slap made him jump sideways and cry out. Something had hit the waves with a swift, flat stroke, but the spray felt like more than salt water. He dabbed his wet cheek warily and sniffed his hand, prepared to be disgusted, but the strange liquid was at least no more viscous than tears. The smell, though . . . it was tart and slightly metallic, like acid with a hint of zinc.

  Naraldi rested a hand on his shoulder, but he looked out over the sea as he spoke. ‘I am going to introduce you to a ship. There is no need to be afraid. Take your shoes off.’

  ‘Are we going into the water?’ Rafi hopped around in excitement, struggling to remove his left shoe.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Naraldi, calmly taking off shoes, tunic and trousers and putting the clothes into Commander Nasiha’s hands.

  ‘Should I take off my clothes, too?’ Rafi asked nervously. Was this really Dllenahkh’s idea of an appropriate midnight adventure, sending him to go skinny-dipping with his elders?

  ‘Whatever makes you comfortable,’ Naraldi said without concern. ‘It’s warm enough that a little dampness should not trouble you on your way home.’

  Rafi wavered, then took off his tunic and dropped it on his shoes. ‘I’m ready,’ he said.

  The Commander gave him a glance that was part amusement, part pity and not a bit comforting. Rafi turned away, dipped under and over the ropes that edged the pier and stood wavering on the overhang. Naraldi joined him and immediately seized him by the elbow. Rafi tried not to flinch at the strength of his fingers. ‘Breathe,’ Naraldi commanded. ‘It’s courteous to oxygenate yourself as much as possible.’

  ‘What—’ Rafi began, and then he was falling off the pier. Naraldi kept him in a firm grip so that when they hit the water feet first he was more or less vertical. The water was mild but still a shock as it invaded his ears and nose in a painful rush. He struggled free of Naraldi and thrashed upwards to the surface where he blew like a whale, shook water from his head and wept the salt from his eyes. When he could see at last, he turned and scanned the water around him anxiously. Naraldi was a dark blur a few metres away. He was holding on to the lower deck with one hand and watching Rafi closely. Rafi tilted his chin up and up until he could see the edge of the upper deck, and there was Commander Nasiha leaning cautiously over the pier, trying to see everything without accidentally dropping Naraldi’s clothes.

  ‘What—’ He tried to finish the question he had started before the jump, but his eye was distracted by a cloudy luminescence slowly brightening the water.

  ‘You are in no danger,’ Naraldi shouted to him. ‘Stay calm.’

  That was an impossibility. He could hear the slight change in ambient noise; all the background conversations and movement of other people going about their business shifted towards his side of the pier. Other curious faces joined the Commander’s and peered down at him, and the nearby lower deck became suddenly and worryingly full of people coming off their boats and running in from either end of the pier to stare at him treading water. No one looked scared, but everyone looked terribly interested. He tried to swim towards Naraldi and was stopped by a soft, painless tug.

  ‘You are in no danger!’ Naraldi reiterated in a louder voice. ‘Try to relax!’

  Rafi cried out quietly – not quite a whimper and nowhere close to a scream, but it was still a cry of distress. The eerie light in the water surrounded him; when he dared look he saw tiny, myriad filaments wafting in the swell of the tide, curling gently around him and fastening onto his skin. Sensation drained away: the caress of water moving against his body became a muted vibration . . . and then there was nothing. He was floating, isolated, numb. The faces along the dock blurred and receded, and the din in his ears grew louder, as if someone had put a tin pot over his head and was marking time with a wooden spoon. The last thing he saw was a vast darkness surrounding him and at the middle of it all a glimpse of his ten toes glowing briefly in the eerie light before they too were swallowed up in the descending oblivion.

  He was never able to remember the exact moment when he lost consciousness, which was not particularly unusual. He had been knocked out before during the old homestead days, falling out of a tree when he was barely ten, and he knew that a little amnesia was common. What was unusual was that he could not remember when he regained consciousness. He first became aware that someone was speaking, he heard another voice answering and gradually acknowledged it was his own, and then realised he was staring a collection of shapes, colours and textures that coalesced in a moment of slow recognition under the identity ‘Naraldi’. Someone had put a blanket around his shoulders and he was clutching the edges with cold fingers. His face felt tense; he put up a hand to touch his forehead and discovered he was frowning.

  ‘. . . will take some time before we have enough data to reach useful conclusions. Of course we knew from the
start that you probably wouldn’t be successful, but given your other talents, we were curious to see what would happen when Savvi got a taste of you.’

  ‘Savvi . . .?’ Rafi said. He looked around, collecting himself. They were indoors, sitting at a table. Beside him was a window that looked towards a dark, motionless rise. That was land. And that was a bowl in front of him, steaming and smelling of good broth. There was Commander Nasiha, unexpectedly damp and frowning to herself over another steaming bowl, and beyond her the few occupants of the commissary showed politely curious faces as they glanced over, perhaps to assess his rate of recovery. Naraldi . . . he was fully dressed again and his wet hair was tied up in spiky disarray. Rafi glanced under his blanket to check his own status. Not dressed. But – he wiggled his toes – yes, there were shoes on his feet. He reached out a hand for the bowl and gratefully tipped the warming liquid down his gullet.

  Naraldi cleared his throat in a manner that hinted at embarrassment. ‘Yes, Savvi. Not the usual mode of naming, I know, but it’s barely a year old and the taSadiri who were playing with it became rather attached . . . and so, a name.’

  ‘Are there any taSadiri pilots?’ Rafi heard himself ask. It was strange. Part of his brain had been sufficiently awake to begin this conversation, and it appeared as if the rest of him was now alert enough to join in.

  Naraldi laughed at the naïveté of the question. ‘No, no, these things take time! Generations in some cases. But to be an active passenger, a conscious traveller, with no need for the artificial coma and stasis chamber . . . even that is something.’

  ‘But I’m not Sadiri, not even taSadiri,’ Rafi said.

  ‘Yes,’ Naraldi agreed, serious again. ‘There is some genetic element that we have not yet identified. I am sorry.’

  ‘Why should you be sorry?’ Rafi asked. ‘I’m sure you have lots of taSadiri volunteers.’

  Naraldi bent his head and was silent for so long that Rafi thought he had decided to ignore the question, but then he looked up, shared a swift glance with the Commander and met Rafi’s eyes once more. ‘It would have been advantageous for you to find a way to leave Cygnus Beta without the knowledge of Central Government, and for that we are sorry.’

  In spite of the blanket and the broth, Rafi began to feel cold again.

  Commander Nasiha, never one for many words, began to speak. He remembered her demeanour and tone from previous visits to the homestead; she had an abrupt, sometimes harsh manner that could be taken for arrogance and rudeness, but he had gleaned from his aunt’s comments that she was a direct thinker, economical with words and very decisive when ready to take action. Now her voice sounded slow, heavy and resentful. ‘We attempted to extend the studies on new forms of psi ability that we began with your aunt about two years ago. Normally the research networks are very forthcoming with shared data, and initially that was the case. Over time, we have seen that access withdrawn without explanation.’

  Data was being withheld, conclusions could not be drawn, action was risky or had been thwarted outright. No wonder she looked so depressed, unable to trust either home or host authorities.

  ‘We can only speculate why this is so,’ she continued, ‘but one thing is certain. People have disappeared.’

  Another image derailed his train of thought. Many times he had pictured his vanished father with a new identity leading a quiet and utterly ordinary life in a mid-sized town on the fringes, working at some harmless occupation where his charm could not cause trouble for anyone, least of all himself. Now he thought of a room with no windows and thick walls, observers posted at the screens of hidden cameras, visitors made faceless by masks, eyeshades and caps – and the permanent resident and test subject seated within, isolated and bereft of companionship and hope.

  His stomach soured and the taste of bile mixed with the broth. He could not believe in the uncanny clarity of that vision; he only knew that it had first appeared in his nightmares when he was made to wear the cap.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he admitted.

  Naraldi leaned closer and so did the Commander. ‘We have a suggestion,’ said the old pilot.

  *

  After a return journey that was far more leisurely, Rafi and Commander Nasiha found the main house lit up as brightly as if it were past midday rather than past midnight. Dllenahkh came to the door to meet them. He put a hand on the Commander’s shoulder with a brief look of concern and a nod. Her face relaxed just a bit and she nodded in reply, touching his hand with what could have been either reassurance or gratitude or both. She continued on to the dining room but Rafi did not go with her. He stood in front of his uncle and glared.

  ‘You could have told me I was going to get eaten by a mindship.’

  Dllenahkh’s eyes went wide and his eyebrows rose up. ‘Is that what happened?’ He chuckled at Rafi’s indignation. ‘Don’t tell me the details. I am not meant to know, at least not yet. But I knew you’d be safe with Naraldi.’

  There was so much more Dllenahkh could have said, so much that Rafi could have asked him, but all queries choked and died as Rafi’s mind chased the possibilities. Did Dllenahkh know about the psi studies? Was this another area of calculated ignorance to protect the homestead and the settlement from undue scrutiny? The worst of it was that he honestly could not tell whether Dllenahkh was joking or not, but he bit his lip to stop further argument and chose instead to follow the smell of food that was coming from the dining room and trust only in the promise of a hearty meal.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Varicella?’ said Master Silyan. He was utterly confused, and he felt that he could ascribe only part of that confusion to the boy’s atrocious accent. He knew Ntenman as a gifted linguist and a clever manipulator of the ordinary, non-psi kind, which made this singing speech accompanied by a too-earnest look of sheer sincerity ring all kinds of alerts in Silyan’s brain. ‘Who gets varicella in this day and age?’

  ‘Well,’ Ntenman declared happily, as if Silyan had finally seen the point, ‘homesteaders . . . preserving old ways . . . old diseases . . . who knows?’

  Silyan looked to the other occupant of his office for clues. Serendipity sat quietly, displaying nothing more than a small, worried frown and giving Ntenman an occasional opaque glance. There was no illumination to be found there. Silyan dropped his gaze to the handheld on the desk before him and the request for three weeks’ medical leave showing on the screen. The request had apparently come from Rafi’s slate, and that slate was now untraceable, its location function malfunctioning or disabled – a moot point, given that the public transit ticketing records showed Rafi’s clear and direct progression to Tlaxce City. It was more than irregular; it was making his Master’s instincts scream.

  ‘I shall have to call his mother,’ he said unwillingly. It was almost a lie. On Monday, when the fog of a strangely tiring and unproductive weekend had somewhat lifted from his brain, he had tried to contact first the grandmother, then the aunt. Both were unavailable: the former was likely on a boat somewhere in the middle of Tlaxce Lake; the latter . . . well, her comm cheerfully invited him to leave a message, but none of his messages had been answered.

  The mother, Maria Delarua (formerly Adafydd) o-Montserrat i-Tlaxce, had never been in the habit of replying to messages, hence her position as third on Rafi’s emergency contact list.

  Ntenman winced, and that ridiculous aura of pure honesty became dimmed with an awkwardness that was far more trustworthy. ‘His mother doesn’t really like us Lyceum types, does she?’

  Silyan gave him a hard look. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘She doesn’t.’ Varicella indeed! No doubt after the three-week period was up there would be some other excuse, or else complete silence. It was hardly the first time a relative had tried to take a student out of the Lyceum without going through the proper channels. The psi-normal ones were particular offenders in their suspicion and dislike for the school. He would have to submit a report to the Lyceum Board and let their surveyors deal with the recalcitrant famil
y.

  He tapped the screen on his handheld clear and straightened in his seat. ‘That will be all.’

  Ntenman got up and was already at the door until the realisation that Serendipity had not moved from her chair slowed his haste. He gave her a look of puzzled concern; she responded with a brief, reassuring nod which he accepted with some reluctance. Continuing to glance over his shoulder, he stepped out of the office and closed the door behind him.

  Silyan frowned slightly. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Today I submitted my withdrawal from the Lyceum, but it felt rude not to say something to someone in person,’ she explained.

  He smiled. ‘You have always been a guest, Serendipity, not a student. I am only sorry that you will not stay until the end of term.’

  She lowered her eyes. ‘Some of the others are enjoying their time here. I believe there will always be a connection between the Lyceum and my community.’

  He waved off her embarrassment and her stiff attempt at diplomacy. ‘Quite understandable. We Sadiri tend to keep to ourselves. The Lyceum is Terran of a very specific era, and what isn’t Terran is as much concentrated Ntshune as you could hope to find on Cygnus Beta. They like their communities, too, but they don’t mind pulling Terrans in. Once they can keep up, of course.’

  She stared at him. ‘Are you taSadiri, Master Silyan? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yes, and no. Most Sadiri pilots live up to their reputation of being totally attached to their ships. A few act more like the Terran sailor stereotype, with a lover in every port. It only becomes unfortunate when psi-gifted offspring are born into a society that isn’t really equipped for them. You at least have developed and maintained a culture that supports telepathy. Galia and I have lacked such advantages, and we need the Lyceum far more than you do.’

  He truly could not read her mind, nor did he need to when he could see the changes in her face. She appeared to be encountering the sensation of empathy and finding it a new but not unlikeable experience. The moment inspired an unexpected thought that passed unchecked into speech. ‘Maybe you should come to visit us.’