by TylerRose.
“As you choose, Lar Tyler.”
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Ch’Wik.”
“You don’t much care for the duty of following me around all day. I shall have to see how much trouble I can get into, to make it more interesting for you,” she said, turning away to exit through the open doorway on the other side.
Mankell’s suite was only a few steps away, the door opening suddenly as she reached it. Anger stood there, glaring down at her as she looked up the few inches to it. He was about the same age as Ch’Wik.
“I do not move out of the way of a female within my own House,” he glowered, angry at the universe.
She smiled. “If we both take one step to the right, neither of us is getting out of the other’s way. Rather, we create our own path. I will if you will. Otherwise, we will stand here in perpetuity. I don’t get out of anyone’s way when they and their destination are no more important than my own.”
She was right. He hated that too, but he took one step to the right. She took one step to the right and walked forward.
“There. That wasn’t so difficult,” she said, passing him.
“He said no,” the young man said to Curry.
Tyler perceived disappointment and no small amount of anger mixed with frustration from her escort. She set it aside, noticing the breeze inside the room. There was no glass in the windows. The doorway was open to the balcony, the floor slightly sloping down to it to drain water if rain should come in. On the outside, she saw shutters that could be closed in a hard rain, and an awning to be pulled over the doorway.
Mankell stood with her arrival, crossing the distance to meet her halfway to the table. He conducted her to the chair, seated her so they were looking out over the sloping land down to the pond. The table was already laid with several plates containing a variety of two-bite tidbits. Little sandwich-like things, tarts and pastries, vegetable somethings.
“I asked for a wide variety of small things. It will likely serve as our midmeal, given the hour. I’m sure you want to go see things, not be cooped up inside my House,” he said, pouring her cup of tea with a hot, fragrant liquid.
Flowers and mint?
“Was that your heir I met at the door?” she asked, starting to select things for her plate.
“Yes,” Mankell sighed. “Wanting to leave his Garson responsibilities to his House and go traveling among the stars for adventure.”
“What duties? Showing me around? Greeting people when you’re busy? How dull.”
“You could never be dull, Lar Tyler. His mother passed recently and he thinks going away will make it hurt less.”
“Tell him it will only make it worse,” she replied.
“You lost your own mother, I was told. In the fighting on Earth?”
“I see the birds are agitated again. What now?”
Mankell chose to follow her preference. “The men were there to remove the serpent and take it to a better home. Tihi birds are notoriously territorial, more so when they have a clutch. Any disturbance infuriates them and they are more easily stressed for the rest of the day.”
“I’d say that’s how most parents are,” she smiled. “Is her passing why you have no one in the Favorite’s room?”
Instant sadness, but he was too polite to correct her from her rude question. The death had been hard on him as well.
“I withdraw the question,” she said quietly. “Who owns that house on the other side of the stream?”
“Gar Toring. It is of the newer design. The East House blocks our viewing of the Gar Suite and the veranda along the northern side.”
“Why is there no glass in your room windows?”
“Because I am unafraid on my own land. A Gar who fears assassination puts in glass.”
“What about noise?” she asked.
“What noise?”
“Your females don’t make any?” she asked.
His eyes showed a particular darkness she recognized. “They make what noise I choose them to make.”
“What if they are too loud and someone complains?”
He laughed. “No one would dare speak of it to me. To complain among themselves is gossip, which is illegal.”
“Gossip is illegal?” she questioned. “How does that work? How can that be enforced?”
“By witnesses. Relaying a true event is one thing. Turning it into a story to entertain by embellishing makes it a falsehood and gossip. It is illegal to tell a false story on K’Tran.”
“I thought that only a custom.”
“It was until a Gar’s children were pursued by reporters on their way to school one day a long time ago. The bus crashed and the children were hurt. The Rosaas made many laws. The Truth in Storytelling law prevents all false stories. The Privacy of Person laws prevent the pursuit of persons for the purpose of gathering information about them, taking pictures without their consent, recording them without their consent.”
“So no news-persons are allowed to follow me around unless I expressly allow it?” she asked. “But you can film your own land as you choose for security? And your favorite’s room just because you want to?”
“It is expected that a Gar’s land and favorite’s room are so monitored. I am not a news reporter. I am not recording for my own monetary gain at the expense of others.”
“And no fictional stories can be told. Not even as a play or in a book?”
“Correct.”
“It’s such an odd concept to me. On Earth, fiction is one of the largest sections in the book store. Books and movies have numerous subcategories for what type of fiction it is. Action adventure, science, fantasy, romance, mystery, horror. It’s odd to think none of those works can ever be shared on K’Tran.”
“On K’Tran, no. A K’Tran citizen can read them if they live or work on the Congressional station, or on any other planet where it is allowed. It serves an important purpose. K’Tran prize their privacy even when the Gar Suite has no glass in the windows. We do not dip our noses into each other’s homes.”
A moment passed in silence while they ate.
“Are you enjoying my selections?” he asked.
“Very much. I won’t ask what anything is made of. It’s better that way,” she smiled, popping the second bite of a creamy something sandwich into her mouth.
She liked the fragrant tea, and he seemed pleased that she refilled her cup and did not reach for the sugar cubes on the table.
“When we have finished, I will take you to see my village. I am due for a visit.”
“I want to see your Mondragoon first.”
Plates all but finished, tea pot empty, he obliged her. Keeping three paces back, he held his curiosity when she turned back several hundred pages.
Finding Arran’s familiar handwriting, she stopped and read.
There the pale beauty stood,
Garae of her domain
as any Gar you care to name.
Quick to defend the weak, quicker to react to injustice.
Vicious as the Tihi with a day old brood.
I cannot own her
I cannot keep her.
I hold her for a moment all too brief
And she is gone.
If a Gar is never to love
Then I can never be Gar.
Whether she knows
I will not ever know.
Raas forgive me.
She has sole possession
Of this Gar’s soul.
Stroking a finger down those meticulous letters, she was overcome with a burst of love and sadness, respect and loss. She fled the room by teleporting.
A sound from the birds and Mankell looked to see her walking toward the male with hand outstretched. Near the water’s edge, she lowered to her knees. By her tilted head and shuddering body, he knew she was crying.
Too curious to walk away, Mankell went to the book to read the passage she had touched. One he had copied in his own hand during his last year before becoming a man. He had
wondered who the Gar had been speaking of, and realized he’d just met the pale beauty.
He let some minutes pass, gave her sorrow time play out. She wanted to be alone, alone she would be. The male Tihi settled in beside her on the bank, laying his head on her shoulder to comfort her and her head angled toward him to accept the embrace.
“Shall I go to her, my Gar?”
Mankell blinked back to the room with the voice of his old Houseman.
“No, G’Ven. I will.”
Tyler cried it out, this surge of unanticipated emotion. She had not quite loved him. So she’d thought. Apparently she had loved him. To see his thoughts on the page, feel the love and respect with which they’d been written…she had no words for it.
Unexpected.
The intensity coming off the page was much like the first time she’d touched the teacup or the little carved bear. She wondered if Arran had done it intentionally, had so compacted his emotions and feelings that it became a message for her 500 years later. He knew she’d be visiting K’Tran, and it would be very much like him to do.
The emotional storm having passed, she stroked the male bird’s neck.
“I may be able to communicate with you, but your imperviousness makes it quiet for me. Thank you.”
He gave one of the purring sounds, and walked away when she stood. Turning, she saw Mankell sitting some thirty feet back, waiting her out.
“Now I am ready to see your village.”
“My grav-bike awaits.”
Grav as in anti-gravity. Rather like a motorcycle but with runners wide enough to rest their feet on comfortably. She climbed onto the back, straddling the bench seat in a way no K’Tran woman would dare. He lifted a foot to reach over the seat in front of her, careful not to kick her, and she slid her thumbs into the belt loops of his slacks.
“You are familiar with such a vehicle?” he asked, holding a helmet for her.
She took it in one hand and tossed it to the ground. “On Earth, they still have wheels. Let’s go.”
He dropped his helmet as well and throttled the grav-drive. The bike soared forward over the driveway and turned onto a walkway around the North House. The path met up with the road down to the line of trees. A line that was more a narrow band, a visual barrier between the house and the village. A benefit to both, no doubt. They were through it in a few seconds and slowing onto the main street through the rustic village.
“Do they have electricity?” she asked, getting off the machine when he stopped.
“Oh yes. Communal dining is encouraged for the midmeal and the evening as well. You see there my school? The children will be out soon to eat with all their families. There is my village hospital. The physician has an office in my House as well and sees to other families on my land. Everything you see to the East of the stream is mine, to five roads farther East. And to three roads farther North and South.”
“Who owns the next House to the East?” she asked.
“Gar Untrock. He has a chicken farm but also dabbles in whiskey.”
Men and women bowed or curtsied to their Gar as he approached the open sided shed. One of the men quickly brought up a crisis in a drainage ditch that was blocked and the water was backing up because of the rain the previous night. Tyler followed them down to the ditch, seeing the top edge of the pipe partially under water. Mankell didn’t hesitate. He took off his shirt and stepped down into the water to reach into the pipe to find what he would find. Taking a big breath, he went under the water for nearly half a minute, and came up with a large piece of wood. Another man took it from his hands and he went in again. This time he brought up a big piece of canvas-like material.
“Looks like someone lost a tarp,” he said, water around him visibly flowing into the pipe.
The men climbed out.
“Now look who’s sopping wet,” Tyler grinned.
“We both have our reasons. Will you wait here while I change? This cloth is not comfortable when wet any more than yours was.”
“Of course I’ll wait.”
“I will only be a few minutes.”
Few minutes indeed, as he sped up the road twice as fast as when she had been on the thing.
She saw several men had arrived. The one called Ch’Wik and another his age, under the authority of another man closer to Mankell’s age.
Tyler sat at a table to watch as the people gathered to eat. Younger children sitting with their families. Older ones sat together. Working teams split up to eat with their wives and children. Very family oriented. She sensed no resentment from wives to be serving the meal, to be housewives. There had been conscious decisions to take that role rather than go to college. Or to take that role after they’d completed college. They weren’t uneducated unless they wanted to be.
“What’s your name?” she asked the second young man assigned to guard her.
“I am Saber,” he replied, equally as disappointed with the earlier “no” answer from the Gar.
“I understand you guys wanted to go on a ship and travel in space. What jobs are there for that?”
He stared her in the eye before sitting on the bench beside her. “Captain Osan, from the House over the stream, has a contract to transport goods from K’Tran to other planets and bring back their goods. It’s a chance to see something other than this boring planet where there’s no opportunity to do anything but farm or be in an army.”
“Could you not go to college to learn something more?” she asked.
“I did not test well enough to go to college. I’m a grunt and a grunt is all I’ll ever be.”
“Would you rather be someone’s newest North House resident?” the older one asked. “Quit feeling sorry for yourself, Saber. Take a spot on the perimeter.”
Tyler stopped him with a grasp of his wrist and looked hard into his eyes.
“I get it, Saber. I grabbed my opportunity when it came and now I’m here instead of on my own boring planet. My planet is nothing but war and hating each other. I like this one much better right now.”
He said nothing, going to the edge of the cement pad.
“My apologies, Lar Tyler. Our young men are in a state of unrest and discontent,” said their supervising relative.
“I do not find that a thing to apologize to me for,” she said, and went out of the shed on Saber’s side, forcing the young men to follow her.
She walked up the side road to the country road along the North side and took a full circle look.
“Are you between crops?” she asked, seeing the empty fields.
“They just harvested last week,” Ch’Wik said.
“Which is why you have nothing to do now?”
They didn’t respond, which told her the answer was yes.
The road was raised from the land below, but levelled out at the corner of the next cross road. Land from there to On’R city was flat as a pancake.
“What’s that over there in the distance?” she asked, pointing to the North.
Ch’Wik looked to see what she saw. “That haze in the distance?”
“Yes.”
“That is Noqaray City, some twenty miles away.”
“Let’s go there.”
“You said you would wait for Gar Mankell,” Saber reminded her.
“I did, didn’t I?” she mused.
“He would be most infuriated that you did not. More so that we allowed you to go so far without his knowledge,” Saber added.
“He is not my keeper. I go where I choose.”
The grav-bike came out of the woods, stalling her spur of the moment trip to the next city.
“Damn. Papa Bear showed up,” she joked as Mankell turned the machine up the hill to the road.
Saber laughed and Ch’Wik snorted and turned away a step.
“He wants me in his North House, doesn’t he?” she asked.
“He’s a Gar. He wants every female he sees to be in his North House,” Saber told her. “Every female is his for the mating if he can catch her or bu
y her. It’s how he was raised. How all the Gars are raised.”
The vehicle stopped beside her and he reached out a hand for her to get on again.
“There is a market in On’R city, across from the Rosaas Tower. The garden is hosting a poetry reading. You will meet many people in our cultural arts.”
The younger men jogged down the hill to their grav-bikes as she got on his.
“I have a question. If there’s nothing to do on the farm because harvest was two weeks ago, why not let them go into space for a trip?”
“To do so, they must formally leave my House. It is their Birth House. Once a man breaks with his Birth House, he cannot ever rejoin it. Other than the Garson, that is. Taking a job on a ship would force them to separate from their family forever. Were it another man as Captain of the ship, I might consider giving them temporary leave. But Osan is a degenerate and a dishonorable man and I will not have them so debased by serving him.”
“Isn’t that their choice?” she asked. “As men?”
“It is not your place to speak about men’s matters.”
She shoved him over the side of the bike and to the road with a little help from psychokinesis.
“Don’t you ever fuckin’ talk to me like that!” she snarled down at him, pulling herself forward on the seat.
A squeeze of the throttle and the bike took off, leaving him stunned on the road and wondering what happened. Saber didn’t wait for orders. He followed with Ch’Wik only a second behind, catching up as she turned right onto the next road West. They could both guess where they were going, and rode with her the twenty miles to Noqaray.
By the time they reached it, she had cooled off a little bit. Finding what looked like a library, she parked and went in with them close behind. They watched over her with markedly more intense respect. She went to the children’s section first and browsed through books about colors and numbers and shapes. Books about the Raas, the ancient gods of K’Tran VI and the formation of the Rosaas. The word meant “mirrors” of the Raas. Mirrors of the gods. That explained a lot.
No fiction meant the library was all history, biography, politics, locations/travel, science, nature/biology, archaeology, anthropology.