by Jean Johnson
“I cannot, sir,” Shi’ol stated without turning her head or getting up. Colvers glanced their way even though she did not; the markless man’s expression was somewhere on the borderline of mildly annoyed, no doubt by the interruption and conversation. The privilege-suspended countess continued with a slight edge to her tone, one that was also mildly annoyed. “The Terrans have taken it over. I am therefore taking a break now, sir, because floor-cleaning is the last of my duties for the day. Sir.”
Li’eth and V’kol exchanged looks. V’kol finally shrugged, and said, “Carry on, then, Private.”
Gesturing with a pink-marked hand, the leftenant superior nudged Li’eth out of the lounge. By unspoken accord, they turned down the corridor toward the hangar. V’kol eyed the prince a couple times before finally speaking.
“Did she tell you what they were planning to do?” V’kol asked, meaning the Terran Grand High Ambassador.
Shaking his head, Li’eth headed into the observation hall, overlooking the hangar. The Terrans—two-thirds of them, the ones not actually asleep at the moment—had sprawled out over the floor, some sitting, some lying on their backs or their stomachs, all of them with what had to be every single spare writing tablet in the quarantined section of the space station in their hands. Three of the five Terran telepaths were seated on crates. Jackie sat at one end of the trio, her body perched at an angle to the window up on the second floor. She and the other two telepaths present did not have tablets in their hands, however.
About a dozen people were still on their feet. One of them, a man with brownish hair and freckles—one of the brown-clad soldiers, a mah-reen—started reciting something from his tablet, while everyone else . . . Li’eth wasn’t sure what they were doing, but as they watched, a couple more of the dozen or so who were standing sighed and sat down. Then one of the women who was still standing checked her tablet and recited from it as well . . . and then some sort of conversation took place.
The other anomaly in the room was a set of five giant grids spaced around the edges of the group. They sat vertically, like a set of cubbyhole shelving, and were filled with large cubes. Each of those cubes had a different set of V’Dan characters painted boldly on their surfaces.
“It looks like they’re marking off lists,” V’kol murmured, shading the windowpane with his hand to prevent reflections from the corridor’s lighting. “But where they got the giant letter-cube shelves . . .”
The woman shouted and threw her hands up in the air, while the mah-reen and the others sighed and sat down. They applauded, but it was clear she had come out the victor in whatever they were doing. When everyone settled on the deck plates again, the cubes in the shelving grids vanished. It happened, Li’eth noted, at the exact moment that Jackie MacKenzie picked up a transparent cube about the size of her head and . . . shook it?
She rattled it vigorously, pale objects tumbling this way and that inside the box, then she sort of gave it a trembling shake that settled the cubes inside into their slots. Next to her, one of the Terran telepaths—clad in gray, the Special Forces color for their military—held something in his hand, recited something in a steady rhythm—and the cubes on the shelves were back, this time with a different jumbled combination of letters.
“Oh! Oh, I know this game. Quon-set!” V’kol exclaimed, pointing at the observation window. “I don’t know what they call it, but that’s the game of Quon-set.”
Li’eth gave him a confused look. “I haven’t heard of that one.”
“It’s a vocabulary search game—look at the cubes. First column, second row, go right three cubes, and then down two, and it spells the word p’vink. Minus the punctuation, of course.”
P’vink was the word for skipping in sets of two, trading off which foot was the lead foot every two sets. It was a popular dance step for the more vigorous dances. Nodding slowly, eyes wide, Li’eth discovered more words. He pointed. “There, diagonally from just below the top right corner, you can see the start for the word b’gonnan.”
“Yes, but that wouldn’t actually count because you can’t double up on letters,” V’kol argued lightly. “You’ve already used the two Ns, and there’s no third one in the grid. But it’s a good first try—why don’t we go down and join them?”
Blinking, Li’eth eyed his friend. “Join them?”
“Yes, join them.” V’kol pushed on his shoulder, moving him toward the airlock door. “Ba’oul is busy giving stellar coordinates to the Fleet and the astrophysicists, Dai’a is working with the doctors to help gauge the severity of the . . . what did the Terrans call it?”
“Histamines,” Li’eth supplied, moving only a step. He wasn’t sure if he should join, because now that he was back, with his face and his identity uncovered . . .
“Yes, the histamines in our plant life, and Shi’ol is busy watching nothing on the entertainment casts. That leaves us either each other for company, or the Terrans, and they’re all either asleep or in the hangar bay, playing a vocabulary game. Or sitting on a couch in Shi’ol’s presence. I say, why not pit these Terrans against two native speakers?” V’kol offered. He smacked Li’eth lightly with the back of one pink-spiraled wrist and grinned. “Come, it’ll be fun!”
Bemused but willing to give it a try, Li’eth joined his friend and fellow officer in heading for the nearest stairs down to the hangar-bay floor.
CHAPTER 4
(Honestly, Li’eth, you have a perfectly valid reason for how you performed,) Jackie consoled him. (You’ve never played that kind of game before. It takes a lot of effort to pick out a word from a jumble of letters, particularly ones that could be turned sideways or upside down. And you found three words no one else did.)
(Three words total out of five rounds,) he retorted glumly, and poked at the food on his plate with his umma, the standard V’Dan military-issue utensil. He wasn’t the only one poking at his food, but he was one of the few who had a freshly made meal to eat.
Even though they had to eat packet foods for now, with dubious names like peppernoodle hash and Mongolian beef stir-fry, the Terrans had settled into using the dining hall within hours of their arrival. They had done so by sharing a rotation of eight different mealtimes throughout the day, including four snacking hours, moments where they could gather and trade preferences with each other, and used the local utensils and plates and such.
Of course, the Terrans had undergone a round of laughter and merriment, calling the Fifth Tier V’Dan utensil—the one most commonly employed by the military—a spork, a cross between their words for spoon and fork. The exact same sort of utensil they had provided for eating while on board their strange ships, from the very first day Li’eth and his remaining officers had been rescued.
He poked the one in his hand at the vegetables on his plate. V’Dan vegetables, of course; those of his people in quarantine were still free to eat whatever they liked, and indeed were expected to eat it rather than deprive the Terrans of their carefully stockpiled resources. That, and a lot of the food had come in through quarantine in the expectation that it would feed two hundred people. Most of it could be kept refrigerated or frozen until they had a successful inoculation, but in the meantime, lots of fresh vegetables had to be eaten. They were cooked and seasoned reasonably well, but he was still feeling a bit down from the end of the cube game.
(V’kol got over twenty unique,) he pointed out.
(You had five rounds played against roughly a hundred people, including V’kol, who has played this sort of game many times before. He had the familiarity of how to play the game,) she reminded him, using her left hand to pick up her mug of water, which had been flavored with some sort of fruit-smelling powder. Her right hand was busy clasping his left under the cover of the table. (The rest of us had the familiarity of the Terran version—though not all had played it before—and they were working hard to exercise their newly implanted vocabularies. Which was the point of playin
g the game for us. But for you, it was just supposed to be a fun pastime. So . . . did you have fun?)
He had to admit that he did. (It was enjoyable, yes. Kind of thrilling to get those three words no one else got. I just wish I had more. I’m supposed to uphold the honor of the Empire, and all that.)
(Take comfort in how the game fulfilled its foremost purpose: to have fun. You had fun; therefore, it was successful. If you like, we’re playing it again tonight, so that third shift can have a chance at picking unique words no one else has. You’re not in the tally for the chores list, so you can put in more than ten rounds total if you want. You can try to get more unique words if you do come. Twenty hundred V’Dan time,) Jackie told him. (We’ll be in the hangar bay again because the game pieces Sergeant Nhieu manufactured before leaving Earth are awfully noisy, and we don’t want to ruin the rec room for anyone else.)
(How many unique words did you get?) Li’eth asked, chewing on a mouthful of pan-fried vegetables. (You did play, didn’t you?)
(Polyglots are not allowed to play. One of the hallmarks of being a telepathic polyglot is either a photographic memory, or one close enough to being eidetic as to not make much difference. That, and we sometimes confuse which language we’re speaking. But as a compensation, we make excellent arbiters on whether or not a word is real, particularly us telepaths.)
(That’s . . . a little bit sad, actually,) he decided. (Not getting to play that game? It was fun. You should be able to enjoy it.)
She shrugged. (We have other games where it’s more fair for everyone. I like checkers, but I’m bootless at it. Total failure.)
The subthought images that came with the game’s name almost belied her words; it was a fairly simple strategy game. She simply didn’t have a mind that worked well in those ways. At least, not quite as well as other minds did, or so she felt. Li’eth squeezed her fingers briefly in sympathy. She released his hand, needing two for the next mouthful of her meal, the dreaded peppernoodle hash. This, she had told him, was “slightly better than the so-called Hawai’ian pork” which, she informed him firmly, tasted nothing like the tender, flavorful, fruit-stuffed roasted boar they had enjoyed that day on the beach of her family’s island home.
The smell of it was a bit strong, and he could see her eyes gleaming from the need to water. That was the problem with food designed for zero gravity; without gravity to provide thermal convection currents, food literally did not smell as good as it should have, rendering its taste less than perfect. That meant everything in the packets the Terrans were eating was overseasoned to compensate.
(I’m getting subthoughts of how awful that stuff is, even when we’re not touching,) he told her.
(I’ve been shielding my opinions from you, so as not to ruin your own meal,) she admitted. Lowering her umma, she returned her hand to his where it rested on his thigh. As promised, only a tiny bit of gustatory disgust came through her mental walls. Gamely chewing her way through another mouthful, Jackie looked at the clock on the wall. (We’d better hurry. I want a few moments to tidy up and compose myself before meeting with the priesthood representatives.)
An odd thought crossed her mind. One odd enough, Li’eth found himself twisting and diving mentally after it, trying to track it down. Jackie sucked in a breath, startled, and began coughing, choking on a bit of her food. For a moment, the thought-trail was lost. The prince readied an apology when she could concentrate on things other than breathing. (Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.)
She pinched the back of his hand, making him flinch. (Ask before you go diving through someone else’s thoughts, Li’eth! Even if it’s your Gestalt partner’s thoughts.)
(I apologize, I am sorry,) he repeated. (But you have some . . . doubts . . . about V’Dan psychic training and abilities? Or doubts as to my explanation of them? That line of thought does concern me.)
Coughing again, she cleared her throat with a sip of her fruit water, cleared it a second time, and sighed. Mentally as well as physically. (What do you know of Dr. Kuna’mi?)
(Less than you. She is acknowledged as the Empire’s foremost authority on the jungen virus,) he stated, (but that is all I know.)
(Well, she is psychic to some degree. And she was not trained by the same people who trained you.)
Li’eth knew she didn’t mean her own training, or the training which that elderly fellow, Master Sonam Sherap, had given to him in the midst of enduring the Terran version of quarantine. She meant V’Dan training. Training that was wrapped in religious mysticism and couched in religious terms, and which was inadequate in the way that only religion could be, when compared against the methodical, thorough, exacting ways of using science to accomplish the same tasks with far superior results. All of that floated in the subthoughts underlying the meaning of her words.
(I know I did not receive the best of training; I would have had to join one of the Temples to receive that,) he reminded her. (There are many mysteries which only the initiated members of the Sh’nai priesthood are allowed to know.)
(Well, she’s good enough to be a Terran psychic,) Jackie told him. (Today’s meeting with your priesthood is going to tell me how good they are . . . and yes, I can do that without directly reading their thoughts. Of course, if we open up telepathic conversation, I’ll do that, too.)
(What a delightful idea. Because if you can read their thoughts, then they can read yours, and if they can do that, there goes the privacy of your people,) Li’eth pointed out.
Jackie shook her head slightly, smiling at her packet. He knew it wasn’t for the food. (You underestimate me, and you underestimate my government. I am the bold, honest face of my people, but I am also trained at keeping people out of my mind, and out of specific corners of my thoughts. Including you, I’ll have you know.)
(Well, we have gone for hours without contacting each other from time to time,) he agreed, picking up his mug of chalba-a’pa juice.
Her smile became a smirk. (You’ve never once picked up on the times where I’ve speculated on what you looked like when naked, back on that enemy ship, have you? Such as, what happens to the shape of that one stripe on your penis when you’re excited?)
Juice sprayed over his plate. Li’eth grabbed for his napkin, coughing hard to clear the liquid from his lungs. (You Saint-swearing agitator! You timed that deliberately!)
(Nope, but I will say it was fortuitously accidental. Sorry about the water in the pipes.) She solicitously offered him her own napkin, untouched throughout her meal.
(The water in the what . . . ? Oh, the breathing “pipes,” got it.) Li’eth accepted it and coughed into it a few more times before blowing his nose.
(Ever since I saw how much of your body did have stripes, beyond what shows on your face and hands . . . well, I’ve been curious about that,) she confessed. (I’m an adult, I’m a female who is interested in males, and I find you attractive.)
(Why did you hide it?) Li’eth asked her, glancing her way while he mopped at the table next.
She shrugged and scraped at the last bits of her food. (It wouldn’t have been polite or diplomatic to bring it up, and I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable, so I suppressed it. I still wondered, but I kept it locked behind tight walls.)
(So why reveal it now?) he asked her.
Jackie smirked again. (Because it was funny. And it made my point. You’re my Gestalt partner. Our brains are intertwining, telepathically. You’re harder to keep out of my thoughts and subthoughts and underthoughts than anyone else. But we’re taking the inevitable conjoining slowly . . . and until I can talk with your mother, the Empress, on what exactly a Gestalt pairing is, what it means . . . I cannot in good conscience push that bonding process any faster than absolutely necessary.)
(Your willpower must be legendary among your people,) Li’eth observed, clearing his throat roughly.
(Possibly, but it’s not the sort of thing a public servant
boasts about, so I’ve never competed in any way. Well, beyond training exercises,) she allowed. Scraping the last bite from her packet, she washed it down with the rest of her juice, then unwrapped the mint-flavored chocolate that came with the meal. (I’ll be glad when we can get back to eating real food, but I do believe I’ll miss these little mints . . .)
He wanted to talk about how the stuff seemed remarkably like a sweet made from the fruit of a tree his people had, klahsa, a known nonnative, but a different thought crossed his mind. (Jackie, when I have had . . . thoughts . . . about you as well . . . did you sense them?)
(A little bit. I tried not to pay attention, though. I know that Gestalt pairings don’t bother with total mental privacy. It takes time to grow accustomed to the other person’s thoughts, and sometimes a pair has to adjust their personal worldviews to make their ideas and ideals more compatible, but at the same time, you learn a lot about tolerance, compromise, and cooperation. Besides, most of your thoughts about me have been complimentary, even the intimately aligned ones,) she finished. (Who wouldn’t feel good about that?)
(I have tried to accept you as you are,) he told her. Since he had sprayed spittle over his food, the last few bites didn’t appeal to him. Draining his juice glass, he mopped the table again with the napkins, then gathered everything up to take to the galley space for cleaning. The Terrans were thriftily storing their packaging on their ships to be taken back to their world for “reprocessing,” since their plexi was some sort of thoroughly recyclable polymer. (I will admit I had problems in the beginning, but I set my mind to accept you as the different beings that you are.)
(I know.) Mentally, Jackie hugged him. Physically, she was busy gathering up those wrappers so she could take them to one of the bags that would be hauled back to their ships by whoever had that chore for the day.