Only to live in my room forever. Forever slipping, dreaming, hiding from my own brain, my own memories.
I close my eyes and force myself back inside, force myself to breathe—
* * * *
—the hot dry air. A small headache has formed between my eyes. The Quurzod are not cordial, although we've been here for weeks. My host family will not talk while I am in the room. I hear them whispering when I am nearby, and I strain to listen. But they use formal Quurzid whenever I'm around.
Fortunately, my team fares better. They have made recordings of Quurzid in all its glory, marking what they believe to be familial Quurzid and what they believe to be street Quurzid.
No Quurzod will tell us the difference. Once the Quurzod figured out that we wanted to know the entirety of their language, they stopped treating us like guests and started treating us as if we were Xenth.
Except for Klaaynch. Klaaynch is thin, reedy, beautiful according to our culture—long blond hair and classic features—but strange to the Quurzod, whose features are thicker, hair generally a dark, almost orangish red. I cannot quite tell how old Klaaynch is. She's one of those girls who looks the same at thirteen as she will at twenty-three.
I'm guessing she's eighteen or so, very curious, with a gift for language. She already speaks some Standard poorly, learned through overheard snatches of discussion.
She reminds me of myself. All ears, wanting to know what everyone is saying, no matter what language they speak.
Her family won't host, so she watches me from afar. I eat in the prescribed visitor restaurants, and stay in the visitor hotel when I am not with my host family. The Quurzod agreed to host families, but balked at overnight stays, and frowned on sharing meals. “Host” is not really a good term for what they're doing, but we have no other. They are sharing as much as they can.
Klaaynch cannot sit with me in a visitor restaurant, and I cannot go to a Quurzod-only place. Sometimes she sits beneath one of the arching trees that mark every intersection. I have learned to eat outside in the visitor restaurants, at the table closest to the tree. Klaaynch and I talk, or try to, and she has promised me she will teach me familial Quurzid.
She says in diplomatic Quurzid (the only Quurzid I know fluently), They cannot tell me who my friends are. They cannot determine who I care about and who I do not. If they try, I shall challenge them.
I admire her reasoning.
And her courage. She wants to step outside her culture and learn other cultures. She wants to become more than who she is.
Is this what Coop says he saw in me? This desire for knowledge, the desire to add to the core by reaching beyond the training, beyond the culture?
I sit and murmur to Klaaynch, not knowing that her face—
—is the first one I see, rolling toward me, eyes open, mouth gone, as if someone cut it away, those cheekbones crushed, her hair wrapped around her neck. She is buried just above me, thrown on top of me, her blood on my skin—
* * * *
I gasp, and this time I am thinking of escape long before I vocalize it. I claw the floor, the needle poking my skin, the darkness holding me. I climb out and crawl toward the door, nearly there when Jill reaches me. She drags me out of the room as if she's dragging me out of that pit.
I stumble and fall against Deirdre who asks me what's wrong, asks me to talk to her, asks me what I need.
"Leona,” I say. “Please. Find Leona."
And then I pass out.
And wake in one of the hospital beds, like I found myself in after they rescued me on Ukhanda. Leona is there, but not there. She flits in, she flits out. She won't talk to me in the medical wing. She forces me to wait until I am well enough to sit in a conference room without any medical equipment at all. She is even going to bring the chairs.
She knows that I know. She doesn't know what I know. Just that I know.
And I ache because of it.
I ache.
* * * *
Cultures do not invent languages and traditions overnight. They evolve over time. And while some linguists believe that the language comes before the culture, I believe that the language serves the culture.
Think of a culture that has developed four different languages, each with a prescribed purpose. The Xenth, who wear formal clothing and have precise traditions about who may have windows and who may not, who may look to the left and who may not, have but one language, without much more complexity that most human languages. Twenty-eight letters, millions of words, a simple sentence structure followed in infinite variations.
But the Quurzod, who wear little to no clothing, and have windows everywhere, and few walls in their homes, the Quurzod divide the world with their language. Language is forbidden to some, and embraced by others.
Language is not just for communicating, but also for protection. Protection of the culture, protection of the family, protection of the Quurzod traditions, whatever they might be. And whatever they might be, they are precious to the Quurzod.
In my excitement to learn, I forgot about strictures and structures and barriers. I forgot that language conceals as well as reveals. I forgot that protections exist for a reason. And I forgot what it is like to be young and curious and different from everyone else.
I forgot.
I grew up in a culture that embraces difference, celebrates diversity, and loves outsiders. A culture that believes itself superior to all others, yes, but in an open-minded way, a way that allows curiosity, a way that states the more we learn, the better we are.
I forgot that not everyone sees the universe as broadly as we do.
I forgot that not everyone has seen the universe.
I forgot that not everyone is allowed to see the universe.
When we finally get to our private conference room, I tell Leona that she no longer has to defend me. I caused the crisis with the Quurzod. I should have been left behind.
I should have been left to die.
She wants me to explain that, and I do, because I owe her that much. I explain, but haltingly. I do not want to slip into the memories again. But someone has to understand. Someone has to know. Besides me.
* * * *
Children absorb language. They are born without it, but with the capacity to learn it. Some lose that capacity as they age, or let it atrophy or never really had a great capacity for it at all. But others never lose the ability to absorb language, and consequently, they crave more and more of it.
They want to learn—or maybe they need to learn.
I have always needed to learn. Sounds and syntax are like symphonies to me, and as much as I love the old symphonies, I am always searching for new ones.
Klaaynch needed to learn too. And if all I had done was teach her Standard, we would have been fine. But she wanted to teach me the glories of Quurzid—all of Quurzid—and I wanted to learn.
She might have gotten away with teaching me some familial Quurzid. She was right; no one could choose her friends for her.
But street Quurzid—it was beautiful and complex and revealing, a culture in and of itself, one that revered violence and anger as a way of life. Each word had degrees of meaning depending on how it fell in a sentence, as well as what tone the speaker used (High, low? Soft, loud? Quick, slow?), and each meaning had nuances as well. Street Quurzid was one of those languages that would take weeks to learn and a lifetime to understand.
I was thinking that after I completed my mission as the linguistic diplomat at the peace conference between the Xenth and Quurzod, I would stay on Ukhanda and study street Quurzid. I would spend the rest of my life immersed in the most complex language I had ever heard.
Maybe I mentioned that to someone. Maybe I had merely thought it. Maybe my intentions were clear to people whose language was so complex that my language must have seemed like a child's first halting sentences.
I don't know.
What I do know is this. I convinced Klaaynch to take me to one of the violence pools—a gathering site wher
e the Quurzod train. They live in those places, not in their homes, not in their streets, not in their restaurants or their places of business, but in their violence pools.
Violence pools are little mobile communities. They exist as long as they need to. If they get discovered by outsiders, they move.
Small buildings, assembled out of sticks and cloth, appear, then disappear as needed. They form a circle around a flattened area, and in that flattened area, lessons happen.
Most of the lessons are in things we consider illegal. How to kill someone with a wide variety of weaponry. How to kill someone with sticks. How to kill someone with fists alone. These are not military lessons, which we also provide, but lessons in survival.
Quurzid, for all its complexity, does not seem to have a word for “murder."
Lessons here are proprietary. Outsiders cannot see them. I did not observe the violence pool during lessons, although I heard about them. The worst, according to Klaaynch, were the defensive lessons. Because if you failed, you would get injured. If you had trouble learning why you failed, you would get injured in the same way repeatedly. If you flinched as someone came at you after you had already been injured once, you were taken off the roster until your psyche healed. If you flinched again after your return, you were relegated to non-violent work—talking, writing, science, mathematics—all of which were seen as inferior.
Klaaynch's dream of being a linguist was considered odd, and it was odd, for the Quurzod. The only thing that saved her, the only thing that gave her any kind of power and potential, was her ability to fight.
She was considered the best of her generation.
And she proved it.
It took her four hours to die.
I know because I watched.
It was the only time I had been allowed in an actual violence pool during fighting. I sat behind Klaaynch and her team. We sat there, all except the two who escaped. Klaaynch and her young team. Me and mine. Twenty-three lives from the ship, lives I wasted in my attempt to learn the wrong form of Quurzid. Awnings attached to the small buildings shaded us, but the air was hot—hotter than anything I had ever experienced—and dry.
The Quurzod gave us water. They gave us something to keep our fluids balanced. They wanted us to live—at least until the fighting ended.
I was not allowed to speak, and I did not.
Around me, Quurzod I had met—most in their teens, some barely adult—fought for their very survival.
But the match that mattered was Klaaynch's.
It took four hours for their best fighters to kill her. A dozen adults against one thin girl. Four hours.
If she had survived for six hours, she would have lived and been granted favors. One of the favors she wanted was to get permission for me to study street Quurzid.
Not the violence pools themselves.
Just street Quurzid.
And while I did that, she wanted me to teach her Standard. Standard, and all of the other languages I knew.
She was so marvelous. So strong. So brave. So beautiful.
But three hours and forty-five minutes in, someone snapped her right femur. She kept fighting, but she had no base, no way to maintain her balance. At three hours and fifty-eight minutes, she fell.
It took only two minutes to finish her off. The others in her violence pool, those who had been contaminated by me, died that afternoon as well.
The fighters dismantled the buildings. Beneath the largest was the pool itself. A hollow, empty pit in the ground, designed to hold the losers of any large fight.
Klaaynch had told me this as we waited for the others to show up. She told me that the pools often were not used, and when the time came to move the violence pool, the actual pool itself got filled.
This one got filled too.
With us.
Most of my team fought back. When it became clear that we would die, they fought. But they were no match for the Quurzod.
They went into the pool. Then me, then Klaaynch's friends.
And finally, Klaaynch.
No one touched me, except to knock me unconscious. It should have been enough to kill me. In the heat, among the dead, in the dryness.
I should have died.
But I did not.
* * * *
To her credit, Leona does not speak as I tell my story. She tries to keep her face expressionless, but she cannot control her eyes. They narrow, they widen. Several times, she keeps them closed for a few extra seconds, as if she does not want to look at me any more.
I don't want to look at me either.
"The other two, they were right,” I say. “I caused this. I'm why we're here. Becalmed."
Leona does not nod. Nor does she reach out a hand to comfort me. She sighs. “They abandoned their post."
They did. They left the Quurzod as the rest of us went to the violence pool. They should have stayed with us, but they thought something might go wrong and they fled.
I should have told the others to go as well. The mistake was mine, not theirs.
"It doesn't matter,” I say. “I shouldn't be here."
"The captain decides that,” she says. “He brought you back."
"When he didn't have all of the information,” I say.
She inclines her head. She is conceding that point.
"Tell him I'm ready. He can't send me back, but he shouldn't keep me here either."
"You're volunteering for execution?” she asks.
"It's the right thing,” I say.
"I don't think that's your decision,” she says. “Not any more."
* * * *
They return me to my quarters. The apartment no longer looks like mine. I recognize everything in it, I even remember hanging the quilt, scrunching the blanket on my divan, but the place feels strange to me, like a memory that I have abandoned. The apartment has a dusty odor, as if I've been gone for months, which is impossible. First of all, I have not been gone more than a few days, and secondly, the air gets recycled in here. Nothing should smell of dust.
I make myself dinner and sit in one of the chairs to eat it. Normally, I would play a language quiz or watch an entertainment, but I do neither. I sit and listen.
The Quurzod whisper all around me. The sound infects me, like the memories infected me. The memories are there, but I no longer slip into them accidentally. Instead, I roll them around in my mind, worrying them, like my tongue would worry a chipped tooth.
No wonder I blocked them. All those people, dead because of me. Because I did not understand—when I am trained to understand.
I should have known. I should have figured it out.
And I did not.
Not even when Klaaynch said to me that she could choose her own friends. When she said it with defiance, with that glow the rebellious get as they anticipate a fight.
If the Quurzod so strongly protect the language they use for family and friends, it should have seemed obvious to me that they would viciously defend the language they strove to keep secret. I should have known—maybe I did know—of course I knew.
And that is why I blocked the memories. I didn't want to remember that feeling—that I'll-deal-with-it-later feeling—the one I ignored.
I have been sitting with my plate in my lap for nearly an hour when the door chime sounds. Coop's chime. It does not surprise me. A part of me has expected to see him all along.
He looks big, powerful, as he comes through that door. His presence is almost too much for the room.
"Leona tells me you volunteered for execution.” He does not sit. He towers over me. “I won't do it."
"It's regulation.” I clutch the plate. I have not really moved, except that my muscles have tensed.
"Regulation is what the captain says it is,” he says.
I shake my head slightly. “If that were true, each ship would be a tiny dictatorship."
He sits on the divan across from me, balancing on the edge, leaning toward me. “It's not like you to give up."
&nbs
p; I look at him. When we met, I predicted the lines that formed around his eyes. But the one that furrows his brow is a surprise; he frowns more than I would have ever expected.
"I haven't given up,” I say. Even when I should have. I'm the one who caused this, not him. I'm the one who didn't die in that pit. I'm the one who climbed out—over bodies, over people I knew. I'm the one who staggered through that desert, to the borders where I knew the Xenth would find me. I'm the one who made it to that village, against all odds. I did not give up. And I should have.
"You haven't thought it through,” he says. “They tricked us."
I blink, frown, then get up. I walk the plate to the recycling unit. If I don't eat that food, someone else should get the nutrients.
"They didn't trick me,” I say with my back to him. “I went to that violence pool of my own free will."
"Not the Quurzod,” he says. “The Xenth."
I turn. I didn't deal with the Xenth. Most of the negotiations with the Xenth happened before I was brought into the discussions.
I am suddenly cold.
He's looking at his hands. “They tricked all of us."
I walk back and sit down. I wait.
He raises his head. Those lines, those sad eyes.
"Think about it,” he says. “The imbalance of power that has existed there for centuries. Then, one day, a fleet of ships arrives, a fleet with more power than the Xenth can imagine. And we offer to help."
He twists his hands together. He has thought of this for a long time.
"They ask the initial negotiators, they say—"
"If we ask you to obliterate the Quurzod, you would do so?” I whisper this in Xenth. I have read the documentation. They did say that, and the initial negotiators wrote it off as a test.
I believed the initial negotiators. After all, they're the ones on the ground. They watch body language. They know the culture—or should know the culture. They're the ones who understand what is going on. Besides, the Xenth's question wasn't unusual. Every culture we encounter wants to know our limits. Our limits are that we help, we do not engage.
Unless we are engaged first.
Asimov's SF, April/May 2011 Page 32