by Karen Lord
My padr was hard to read. His feelings were definitely mixed. He voiced some pride at my commitment and a significant amount of exasperation at my stubbornness. I tried to point out to him that they were the same thing and that went badly. He sent me to the Lyceum ‘to catch up on my Cygnian certification’. Liar. What good was I to the Lyceum, and what good were they to me? He wanted me watched. I behaved until I could be sure he trusted me again, then I behaved for a little while longer. I met Rafi, and then Serendipity, and I dragged out my classes and delayed my departure, playing the idiot to my advantage. I knew the opportunity would come, though for a while I thought Serendipity would be the first to wing her way out of the Cygnian gravity well and taste the air of another world. But Rafi – ha! Long periods of quietness then sudden explosive action. Decisive action, nothing like Serendipity’s directionless yearning.
I faced my padr like a man. I was honest. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I have an obligation to help this boy, but I won’t lie – if it takes me a year on Punartam to do it, that suits me, too. Let me have your blessing this time.’
Years of good behaviour meant maturity in my padr’s mind, and that swayed him to give consent – with conditions. He entreated me with all formal, fervid zeal not to bring any shame to my family on Punartam or Cygnus Beta. He insisted that I return after a year, or whenever Rafi could fend for himself. And then, because he is a practical and canny businessman, he gave me a list of tasks and contacts that would smooth the way to improved credit and increased trade for his company. I agreed, especially to the last condition. I didn’t want to take over my padr’s business, but I did want to see him succeed because no one needs a Zhinuvian trade monopoly, not now, not ever.
I had my padr’s blessing. I had experience of living on Punartam. I knew people, and I was known. No one could say that I had no idea what I was doing. My actions, given the information at the time, made perfect sense, but somewhere between the commitment of an adult and the recklessness of a child, I found a new thing – fear of failure. Rafi saw it, and if he could see it, so would everyone else. That wasn’t good. The usual cheery mask wouldn’t do, either; any hint of artificiality would brand me forever a foreigner. I had to get back into the game with seriousness, focus and intent. Fear comes before a fall, and they don’t bother with bodycatchers in the Punartam pro leagues.
*
At last it was time to leave the biodome. Five Terran days had passed, each one hours shorter than a Cygnian day and minutes shorter than a Standard day, but all five days together could not match the shortest Punartam day when both suns set at the same time.
‘You are now on a twelve-siesta planet; have a nice day,’ said a member of the biodome staff after he finished processing the details of their departure into his tiny microphone, a silvery etching that curved along his jaw and punctuated his lower lip with a highly decorative bracket. He sounded sincere, but there was something about his absent-mindedness that hinted this was his standard farewell, a joke he had repeated so often that it no longer registered in his brain.
Rafi bounced nervously. His clothes felt strange. Punartam fashion started with the familiar beige tunic, but after that it got complicated. Ntenman had trussed him up with two thin sashes and a broad belt with a pouch, clasped a metal band over the looped lanyard on his arm that carried his datacharm, and tied up his hair with a hasp-and-pin contraption made of some material that was as smooth as copper but as warm as wood.
Ntenman’s tunic was covered with a simple brown tabard – no strings, bands or belts for him. Rafi eyed him with suspicion, but he forgot to feel silly when they crossed the biodome’s threshold and he gasped at his first few lungfuls of thin, cool Punartam air.
‘Yes, let’s see you bounce now,’ Ntenman said, laughing at his struggle. ‘I still say Punartam has the edge for Wallrunning training. Gravity may vary from Wall to Wall and world to world, but a good, efficient oxygen intake is a gift for all occasions.’
Rafi touched the oxygen breather at his belt but let his hand fall away. Ntenman shook his head. ‘It takes you without warning. Better sneak a few nips here and there than wait for a full collapse.’
‘How far are we . . . going?’ Rafi snatched a quick breath mid-sentence.
‘Thought you’d like to see the sights,’ came the indirect response.
Rafi let it pass because he was indeed caught up in seeing the sights. In Tlaxce City, as in so many Terran megacities and most Zhinuvian warrens and domains, the sky would be almost blocked out by several centuries’ and storeys’ worth of architecture. Punartam’s Metropolis was an inversion; the architecture was deep below the surface, hidden from the sun. Above-ground was open sky save for the towering Academes which locals called the Range, all the more majestic for having no competition, but slender, delicate, as if the spiky vertebrae of a saildragon had been stripped of meat and left to dry under the two suns.
The rest of the landscape consisted of parks and single-storey buildings with rooftop gardens. They gave the Metropolis its dominant colours – dark green, hazy purple and faint silver. Some of the gardens were under domes and those showed a wider variety of plants. Rafi thought he saw heliconias, their vivid orange and red striking him with a pang of homesickness, but they were too far away for him to be sure. There were no trains or cars, at least none visible, only a few small aerolights gliding from tower to tower. People stood and sat and walked in the parks, gardens and pathways, but there were not enough people, never enough people for such an important city. He knew why.
‘Roughly one-third,’ said Ntenman. ‘Two-thirds below, working or sleeping. It’s a maze down there. You’re better off staying topside until you learn not to get lost.’
Rafi held up a hand in a silent plea, leaned over for several seconds, then reluctantly straightened. He dragged a few deep breaths through the oxygen breather and tucked it back into his belt. ‘Ready,’ he said.
He thought he could see where they were going, and it looked far. The base of the Academe was set within the concentric ripples of a terraced garden, a pretty effect that made the tower resemble a spear rising up from the depths of a green lake.
‘Isn’t there a pedestrian path nearby? One that . . . moves?’ he asked.
‘There’s that soft Terran constitution coming through. Try to hide it better, Moo. You don’t look overly alien. Use that to your advantage. And put in your audioplug. I’ll point out what’s interesting as we walk.’
After fifteen minutes and another stop to breathe, Rafi gave in and strapped the breather to his face. It cleared his head and his vision sufficiently that he was able to take interest once more in what was going on around him. Excitement slowly built, fizzing in his blood like a fast-acting stimulant and almost sending him from the thrill of newness to the thrill of fear. He was no novice to alien life. Cygnus Beta collected every aspect of the galaxy, Tlaxce was a proper galactic-class metropolis, and even if he had managed to stay blinkered and cloistered with only Terran influences, there was plenty in both homestead and Lyceum education to ensure that he had no reason to gawk. But, but, but . . . the difference, the sheer unsettling difference of the place was overwhelming to the point that he could not figure out whether to be gleeful or petrified.
Two people walked side by side behind the low wall of a nearby terrace, half-obscured by the fall of green vines and purple flowers that pushed over the wall and down the steep slant of the buttressing earth. There was nothing familiar by which Rafi could measure size, but one of the figures was twice the height of the other, and their arms swung with a jerky arc that hinted at unusual jointedness. A man (at least, he looked like a man) passed them on the path with a creature at his heel. The animal (at least, thought Rafi, beginning to panic, it looked like an animal) was covered with something too mobile to be fur and too fuzzy to be feathers, and it moved with a hopping, bipedal gait that bounced its narrow, bird-like head between elbow and shoulder height. Rafi searched for a reference, could not determine what it was and
settled for thinking of it as a miniature ostrich, though without the long neck and the round body. The odd pair were in a hurry, too distracted for even a brief greeting-gesture, but when Rafi’s heart skipped at the nearness of the unknown, the man gave him a blinked side-look and a tiny wry smile as if he had heard the muffled thump from within Rafi’s chest.
Ntenman missed the exchange. ‘It used to be a lot busier above-ground. Some of the old vids and holos we get on Cygnus Beta still give the wrong impression, but Punartam culture goes through these phases. Once it was the Academes that influenced everything. You had working and residential communities pooled like ink around the base of the towers, and you could tell just by looking at the landscape who the biggies were. Now it’s all subtle and discreet and below the surface. You see neat little gardens around the towers and—’
‘And the Walls?’ asked Rafi eagerly.
Ntenman looked at him. ‘Yes. The commercial leagues play and practise below now, but there are still amateur leagues that play friendly games on the tower-side walls.’
‘What?’ said Rafi, confused at the look.
Ntenman looked away again. ‘I know it’s new and exciting, but don’t get too excited and don’t act too new. Now, put these in your listening queue: Five Trees Escape. Central Fastline Station. Sundome Mezzanine Slowline. The Board of Credit Assessors (that’s the only non-Academe tower, by the way). The Credit Exchange Bureau is the low bump next to it; we’re going there after our next sleep. And Academe Surinastraya – that’s where we’re headed – which specialises in Energy.’
Ntenman’s chatter got them halfway to the tower, but by then Rafi’s dizzied exhaustion had become a stagger. Ntenman complained under his breath, but he led Rafi along a fork in the path, under a metal archway set in a stone wall and into a capsule of the Sundome Slowline. It looked innocent, paused and poised on an antigrav pad in a small chamber with an open sky, but then it lurched off at speed, a single pearl zipping along the Slowline, half-sunk in a trench with sky and a sliver of horizon as the only view options. Rafi tumbled at the start and only saved himself by clutching the lower edge of the high window-ceiling. Ntenman sighed tolerantly and waited, leaning safely and comfortably, until the motion had steadied, then came over to show him where to park his centre of gravity.
‘I keep forgetting what a booby I was when I first got here,’ he admitted, unpeeling a seat from its wall recess. He remained standing, nonchalant in his ability to anticipate changes in the capsule’s direction and speed – not very different from the changing gravity of a Wall, in fact.
The journey was short, but Rafi, to his embarrassment, fell asleep halfway, going from avidly listening to the topics Ntenman had suggested straight to sudden unconsciousness with ridiculous speed. Ntenman shook him awake and pulled him up with a smile of amused sympathy. Rafi surreptitiously wiped a line of drool from the left corner of his mouth and trailed behind him to exit the capsule. Their single pearl had joined a chain of five others. Shadowy passengers moved within their translucent walls; some were coming, some going, dancing up or down their capsule’s little gangway which connected to the upper pavement and open air above the Slowline track. They moved with the speed of ease and familiarity, but Rafi stepped like an elderly traveller, sober and cautious, until he stood on the broad, flat lawn at the base of the Academe. He gazed around, then up and up, feeling that curious thrill of reverse-vertigo created by an edifice being too tall and too close. Its needle was an imperfect sundial with two shadows, each of a slightly different hue, but true dark at the overlap.
‘Here we are,’ said Ntenman. ‘And look – they’re expecting us.’
Rafi uncraned his neck and refocused his vision on a nearer point. They were two figures, one tall and roundly heavy, dressed in the common galactic suit of tunic and trousers and a light, short robe of office that indicated an administrative rather than academic function; the other taller and trimmer, in what looked like Galactic Patrol urban kit, but unarmed except for a ceremonial knife at the waist. They walked down the wide stone ramp of the Academe’s main entrance, and as they drew nearer, Rafi noted a touch of tension, if not outright haste, in their movements.
‘Long years time I haven’t seen you, Ntenman, and now look. You. Here without so much as warning, far less invitation. Here with child in hand like an elder but still a child yourself. Here like Punartam belongs to you. Can you be bothered to learn shame, if not manners?’
The harshness of the words became a lie with the broadness of the smile, and yet that smile still carried the hint of an edge – Rafi could not tell how or why. In contrast, Ntenman’s smile was painfully, obviously brave.
‘Revered Haviranthiya,’ was all he said as he submitted to the administrator’s hard embrace.
Ordinarily Rafi would be waiting attentively for an introduction, but the identity of the second figure had become clear to him at last. The uniform was the first clue, then the face familiar enough from a single brief meeting on the Sadiri settlement, but it was the expression of annoyance and reproach that triggered his guilt reflex and jogged his memory. ‘Corporal Lian?’
First a calm correction. ‘Second Lieutenant Lian, newest officer of the Galactic Gendarmerie.’ Then a stern glare. ‘Your aunt is worried sick. Why haven’t you been in touch?’
Conversation continued at Rafi’s side while he stammered out apologies. ‘So tall,’ Haviranthiya was saying, slapping a wincing Ntenman with cheerful yet painful force about the shoulders. ‘So broad. And still a child.’
Rafi fought his way out of the fog of contrition. ‘Wait. How do you expect me to be in touch? There’s about a month’s message delay for ordinary mail.’
A tired look and a sad shaking of the head were the only reply. Guilt prompted Rafi’s brain a little further and he felt his face go hot as he recalled the still-unread data chip. He spasmed, grabbing the pouch at his waist as if seized with sudden incontinence, and said pathetically, ‘Things have been so busy.’
‘Your friend Ntenman contacted the Revered, who then contacted us Cygnians. I had a separate communication that gave me some more information on the situation . . . so I got a few days’ leave and came here.’
‘Came here from where?’
Lian gestured vaguely east. ‘Academe Bhumniastraya. Terran Studies. Doctor Daniyel is there.’
Rafi shook his head. He had heard of her but never met her. With another pang of guilt he remembered the datacharm and the many, many papers he had saved there. He was holding his information everywhere but inside his head.
‘The Academe asked her to come. She’s very good, so good in fact that they wanted her to plan and lead the fieldwork.’
‘Wasn’t she sick?’ Rafi asked, somewhat amazed by this small talk but happy for the illusion of ordinariness. At his side, Ntenman was being subjected to a resonant, top-volume and frighteningly happy interrogation sprinkled with reminders of his lack of status and common sense. Rafi was desperate to keep out of it.
‘She was, but they asked her to reconsider taking a full cure, and so she did. Exigencies of the Service and so on. Physically, she’s doing very well, but she says they give her so much to do that she’s still as chronically fatigued as ever.’
The uncomfortable, one-sided conversation ongoing nearby overcame their polite attempts to ignore it and drew them in. ‘And this is your friend! Does he know he is dressed like a child? So strange, when you are not and should be! Ntenman, you cannot be responsible for a child if I am to be responsible for you. Perhaps our esteemed Second Lieutenant will take charge of him for us?’
‘There’s no need, Revered Haviranthiya,’ said Lian with a cautious smile. ‘Rafi has reached partial majority under Cygnian law. He’s not a full adult, but he’s not a child. He can go where he chooses . . . for now.’
Rafi kept his mouth shut at those last ominous words. It had just occurred to him in a blood-chilling, bone-numbing instant that although Lian was a friend of his aunt’s, a posting in the Galactic
Gendarmerie meant a shift in location, not role. Strictly speaking, Lian was a representative of the military police and had the authority to send him back to Cygnus Beta.
Haviranthiya’s smile had not once faded, but there was a detectable shift from sarcastic irritation to unshakeable intent. ‘Then let him choose to stay here a while with his friend. I can educate them both on what it is to be a man on Punartam.’
Lian’s smile also did not falter though it did quirk questioningly, conveying more warning than uncertainty. At least it appeared to be friendly warning, as between equals. ‘Do keep me updated,’ was all Lian said. ‘I will organise for his credit—’
Haviranthiya cut the sentence in half with an imperious chop of his broad right hand. ‘Not at all necessary. It would be an honour and a pleasure to arrange for his introductions, his keys, his essentials and his accoutrements.’
Rafi wondered if it was possible to pass out from the sheer pressure of mounting bewilderment. Lian gave him a quick, amused glance.
‘In fact,’ Lian added, with a lilt that suggested suppressed laughter, ‘after you’ve given the boys an initial briefing, perhaps Rafi could join me later for some pre-sleep refreshment and recreation. I think we need to talk.’
Chapter Eight
‘The Ntshune, who are the alleged emotional centre of humanity, have elaborate, calculated forms of retaliation. The Sadiri, for all their mental capacity and apparent coolness, are blunt, direct and passionate in revenge. These are crude generalisations, but they are so attractively paradoxical, so charmingly mythic, that they have acquired a kind of truth as both Sadiri and Ntshune try to live up to their respective reputations.’
Ntenman roused slightly from his slouch on the daybed and glared at Rafi, obviously still tender from the prolonged flaying of his ego. ‘Listen and learn all you like, but there’s no need to share.’