by Karen Lord
Then we got chatty. I told her my thoughts on the mission, that it was essentially a waste of time, but at least I was getting paid to travel the world for a year, and the Sadiri would have the satisfaction of knowing they’d investigated every possibility. She told me she was tired of academia and taking a sabbatical to write a book seemed a bit tame, so this way she’d be out for a year and still have the sabbatical year to write, thus staying away from the university for two years instead of just one.
The wine went down rather smoothly. I discovered that she did, in fact, have a fair bit of taSadiri in her background. She found out that I had just enough Ntshune in me to start people off on a giggle loop. You’ve heard of someone’s laughter being infectious? Well, many Cygnians of Ntshune stock have the knack of giving people the giggles in a serious way, probably some unintentional emotion-feedback thing.
We spent the next inspection choking back snickers while the Sadiri gave us puzzled looks.
The next journey was for more sober talk. She said she’d been engaged, but there’d been a mutual decision not to marry after her academic career took off, leaving her tied to the city and her fiancé still wanting the life of a homesteader. I said I’d been engaged too and also broke it off by mutual agreement, though my career was nowhere as illustrious as hers.
“You still have time,” she said generously.
At first I thought she was talking about my career, and I was flattered, but then I realized she meant time to have a family, and I felt a little less flattered.
“Well, what about you? Have you considered early retirement and going back to be a housewife on a homestead?”
She looked embarrassed. “I suppose I could register my name with the Ministry of Family Planning, but I keep falling for the wrong men and getting distracted.”
The words were general, but there was something in the guilt that crossed her face that made me gasp and blurt out, “Lanuri?”
For the first time, I heard bitterness in her laugh. “I hope I’m not that obvious!”
“No! No, you’re not. It’s just … well, you do seem to get along quite well together, and … hmm … how do the Sadiri show they care, anyway?”
She pushed back the rough bangs of her hacked-off hair and scowled. “Well, I’m sure they don’t do it by constantly mentioning how beautiful and intelligent and completely irreplaceable their late wives are!”
“Oh,” I said sadly.
“Yeah, I’m a sad, sick person, jealous of a woman who died in the greatest genocidal attack since … well, since Cygnus Beta was founded. And if you so much as breathe a word,” she concluded sharply, and it was time to change the subject.
We got back a little earlier than the other two, and rather than sit and wait outside, we persuaded Joral to let us move the farewell party into Dllenahkh’s office. The rest of the place was empty—inspection tours often took us past the usual work hours—so we left the door open, put our feet up on his desk in a kind of rebellion against all Sadiri sensibilities, and set to finishing off the wine.
After a short half hour had passed, we heard Joral’s hushed voice through the open doorway. “Dr. Mar and Second Assistant Delarua seem to be engaged in some kind of female bonding ritual.”
“In my office?” came Dllenahkh’s bemused reply. I think both of us were picturing the expression on his face, because we went off into another giggle loop that put paid to any lingering illusion of professionalism.
Fortunately, that wasn’t the final farewell. We had a nice, sober proper seeing-off a week later at the main train station in the city. Gilda was there, and Dr. Lanuri and Freyda. I hugged Gilda hard, making a mental note to send many souvenir trinkets to her kids, and got cheek smooches from Freyda, all the while thinking, I’m drinking buddies with Freyda Mar! How cool is that! We clasped arms briefly and exchanged looks. Hers said, Don’t tell anyone how pathetic I am, and mine said, Hang in there, you’re not pathetic, you’ll be fine.
The three Sadiri men, Lanuri, Dllenahkh, and Joral, stood slightly apart, making their somber farewells, far more absorbed in the meaning of the mission and their hopes for its success than in any trivial sadness over the temporary absence of a colleague. I felt a little jolt when I looked at them, a sudden awareness of the insane reality that had brought them here, a flash of insight into how death and devastation had completely reshaped their lives and destinies. Like Freyda, I suddenly felt foolish for being annoyed at them over a small matter of unrequited love.
We boarded and found our seats. I leaned my head against the window by my seat, looking at Freyda as she lingered to give us a final wave and blinking back tears. Silly matchmaking—and now she would have a year to suffer through, pretending her feelings didn’t exist. I was vexed with Dllenahkh. Dangling an emotionally unavailable Sadiri male in front of her—hah; that was a tautology if there ever was one—was more than cruel, it was irresponsible. I thought of the messed-up attempts at courting that had left tangles even the ministry wouldn’t be able to unsnarl. Would any of them be capable of forming normal unions, unions based on more than a desperate need to keep their cultural and genetic heritage alive? Did the Sadiri ever admit to needing therapy?
My struggle with my emotions did not go unnoticed.
“You will miss Dr. Freyda Mar very much,” said Joral, examining my face curiously.
“Yes,” I said, my tone firm, calm, and neutral. “I wish I could have had more time to work with her.”
Joral nodded in understanding. “Dr. Lanuri speaks of her often. I believe he finds her to be almost Sadiri in her clarity and depth of thought. Furthermore, he says that her appearance is very pleasing and in many aspects reminiscent of his late wife—”
“Joral,” Dllenahkh chided.
“But it is true. I am only repeating what Dr. Lanuri has said on several—”
I stared at him as suddenly all the fragments that I knew came together in a gestalt that looked nothing like what I had at first assumed.
“Joral,” said Dllenahkh sternly. “It is not appropriate to discuss—”
“Joral, you’ve got more sense than any of us!” I cried. I jumped up and ran to the door, paused with a skid, went back to grab the startled youngster around the face and plant a kiss on his forehead, then took off again. Freyda was just turning to leave the platform. I thundered toward her, and she looked back at me in shock.
“He loves you, you remind him of his wife, he’ll never admit it, it’s a stupid Sadiri thing, it’s up to you—go, go, GO!”
She gaped at me, her eyes gradually widening during my whispered babble and ending up filling with tears, the jaw drop becoming a wide grin. I squeezed a quick hug around her shoulders and ran back to slither through the carriage doors before they slid shut.
I returned to my seat with a small smile of bittersweet triumph. Dllenahkh looked at me with a strange expression that I couldn’t quite read, but I didn’t care. I was thinking about the year ahead and hoping for at least one happy ending for a friend.
Joral leaned forward and said earnestly, “You seem to be very sad about leaving. It is all right if you wish to cry, First Officer Delarua. We will not think badly of you. We understand that this is common behavior for many Terran females.”
“Well, I’m Cygnian,” I snapped. “And I wasn’t going to cry.” I swear, nothing irritates me more than being overemotional in front of a Sadiri. They make you feel so silly.
Dllenahkh coughed almost apologetically. “First Officer Delarua, at one stage you suggested that I had complicated your life by asking for you to be assigned to this mission. Is it now the case that you are beginning to enjoy the complications?”
“That’s an almost Cygnian streak of smug-bastardness you’re displaying there, Dllenahkh,” I warned with a small, rueful grin of acknowledgment.
He straightened slightly, and his eyebrows rose by a fraction at the sly insult. Then the train pulled out and we were off to start our grand adventure, around the world in one Standard ye
ar.
Zero hour plus eleven months twenty-eight days
Standard Time was invented by Sadiri pilots. Most Sadiri procedures and quantification followed straight lines and linear progressions, created for the convenience of the ten-fingered. But Time … Time belonged to a higher realm. It could not be carried in human hands, not while it constantly carried human minds. It was all circles, wheels within wheels, a Standard year of three hundred sixty Standard days coiled up in twelve months, which in turn were composed of the small whirlings of twelve hours day and twelve hours night, tiny spinning minutes and seconds, ever-cycling breaths and blinks and beats.
To be described as having a pilot’s mind was both curse and compliment; it could mean being unable to tell the difference between prophecy, memory, and mere déjà vu.
Dllenahkh knew that it was almost one Standard year since the destruction of his home and his life. He knew it not like a memory but like the vague dread of a possible death, a death yet to come. He left the thought and the feeling while he could still breathe and focused instead on the present. The train vibrated gently, its windows filled with the rich black of a moonless night in deep country. Delarua had already retired to the sleeping car, leaving them to continue their work. Dllenahkh looked into the soothing darkness, then made himself examine his handheld screen once again. The ambient light was too dim and the screen overbright, but perhaps, he admitted, that was not where the fault lay. The minute tension around his eyes might be caused by the fact that he was staring too intently at the reports and briefs, as if willing them to create the world he wanted to exist.
Behind closed doors, the council had wrangled over the mission proposal with a pettiness and lack of direction to rival the callow youths they claimed to represent and govern. Then again, from what he had heard and seen, the Government of New Sadira was hardly doing any better, something that he found reassuring and dismaying in equal measure. If the Cygnian Government’s response had been the least bit lukewarm, the mission would have been dropped for good, but they had been enthusiastic, offering specialists, funding, and resources until the project gathered unstoppable momentum and even the most cynical councillors softened.
Hope: that was the key. They were all clutching at straws, despairing and drowning, then clutching at a fresh set of straws. It was exhausting. It was all they had. Naraldi said it was important to keep moving forward—yes, forward, one clutched straw at a time. Highly ironic advice, considering, but useful nonetheless and something to hold on to now that Naraldi was off on his own mission, beyond the reach of any comm or courier. His last words, perhaps? No, never that. He expected that Naraldi would have a safe journey and a safe return. What was one more straw to add to all the rest?
“First Officer Delarua is not what I expected,” Joral mused.
Dllenahkh kept his head bent over the mission schedule. Sometimes it was best not to engage when Joral indulged in his habit of thinking aloud.
“She kissed me.”
Dllenahkh glanced up at the young man. As a statement it was innocuous, but Joral’s face held that anxiously pondering expression he used whenever women were being discussed.
“She is too old for you,” he replied firmly though not unkindly. “Now, let us go over the Acora, Sibon, and Candirú briefs again. I would like us to be fully prepared when we meet our new colleagues.”
A MEANS TO OTHER ENDS
“We have a doctor on this team,” I said through gritted teeth.
Dllenahkh raised his head for a momentary glance. “We have a Commissioner who is an anthropologist and a geneticist. Such expertise is not necessary for trivial injuries.”
The only expertise Dr. Daniyel had that I wanted was the skill of understanding my need to howl shamelessly while having centimeter-long spines picked out of my palm. I hissed and twitched as Dllenahkh’s tweezers probed too deeply. He gave me a tired look, firmly positioned my wrist between his knees, and gripped. Then he held the tips of my fingers and applied the tweezers with a will. I twisted in my chair, turned my head into the crook of the elbow of my uninjured arm, and kept it there.
“You may cry out if it makes you more comfortable,” he said kindly. “It was only the movement that was problematic.”
“I’m good,” I whimpered.
After a few more minutes of torture, the barbaric antique tweezers were laid aside and a modern medical scanner was passed over my hand. Having satisfied himself that the wounds were indeed clear of debris, Dllenahkh picked up another instrument and began to seal the punctures and lacerations. I emerged from hiding, sighing with the bliss of the absence of pain, and slowly flexed my hand.
“I would recommend that you stay away from that particular plant in future.”
“No disagreement here,” I said firmly.
“She only did it to get out of her turn at poling the punt,” Lian said to Joral with a laugh. They were at the back of the shuttle, unloading the last set of supplies from storage.
“Mm-hm. That elegant trip and fall was all part of my cunning plan,” I said with distracted cheerfulness as I cautiously ran exploring fingers over my healed skin.
Lian and Joral went out, carrying a box between them. In a few minutes, having reassembled and put away the medkit, Dllenahkh also left. I gave my hand one final pat and was about to join them when Joral came back into the shuttle, a slightly furtive expression on his face. He slid into the chair beside me and placed his hands flat on his knees with an air of resolve.
“First Officer Delarua, is Lian male or female?”
I looked at Joral in utter shock. “That is not a question you should ask anyone but Lian. In fact, I don’t even think you should ask Lian that. Why do you even need to know?”
“Lian is highly intelligent and has features that are visually pleasing, but I do not know whether it would be appropriate to—”
“Joral, should you really be assessing the wife potential of every female you meet?”
He looked slightly abashed. “Such matters would have been arranged for me before, but now, with things as they are, it makes sense for me to review all possible options.” He began to tap his fingers on his knee, counting. “Nasiha is already bonded, you are too old—at least too old for me—Dr. Daniyel is definitely too old, and that leaves Lian by a simple process of elimination—if, of course, Lian is female.”
“Joral,” I said quietly. “A word to the wise. First, it is best to steer clear of any assessment or discussion that uses the phrase ‘too old’ to describe a woman. Second, fraternizing with members of the mission team is not recommended. We will have to live as close as family while maintaining a high standard of professionalism. Complications would not be helpful.”
Joral looked at me apprehensively. He had already learned that it was not a good sign when I spoke slowly and quietly. “I will take your advice, First Officer Delarua.”
“Good. Now, Lian is … Lian. Lian has chosen to live without reference to gender. This may or may not mean that Lian is asexual, though many of those who are registered as gender-neutral are indeed so. However, it doesn’t matter, because this has no bearing on our mission and is thus none of our business. Now come on. They’re waiting for us. My little tumble has put our whole schedule out of whack.”
It was a bit of an exaggeration. Things were proceeding as usual outside the shuttle. Nasiha and Tarik, the Sadiri married couple on loan from the Interplanetary Science Council, were securing equipment on the pallet that held our supplies. Dr. Daniyel was talking to Lian, and Lian was making notes on a handheld computer with a stylus. Dllenahkh also had a handheld and appeared to be recording a memo in a low murmur. Then there was Fergus tweaking some last clamp on one of the punts and Joral and myself bringing up the rear with the last box of supplies we’d need for this trip. We were a motley crew, with two Sadiri in dark blue Science Council uniforms, the Cygnians in Civil Service gray and green (semiformal yet serviceable gear courtesy of the Division of Forestry and Grasslands), and the two remain
ing Sadiri in beige and dark brown civvies.
Fergus, our security and survival specialist, attracted our attention by clearing his throat and began his briefing.
“They say it’s unlucky to urinate in the waters of Candirú,” he said. “It’s true. There’s a parasitic fish in the river that’ll swim up your urethra and get wedged in good and proper. Very painful. Don’t risk it, but if you must, the Commissioner might be able to remove it without calling for medevac.”
The smirk that had appeared on my face at the word “urinate” slowly transformed into a look of sheer horror; my smothered chuckle ended in a sickened gulp. “Oh. You’re not joking, are you?”
Fergus scowled down at me from his two-meter-plus height. “I do not joke. My job is not a joking matter.”
“Okay,” I murmured meekly. Pincushion plants and perverted parasitic fish. I could tell this place was going to be lovely.
Fortunately, my strong right arm was not needed to bring us to our destination before the darkening of twilight. We—or, rather, the rest of the team—poled our three small craft to a central platform in the middle of the tree-fringed marshes and moored them carefully. Fergus boarded first and helped Dr. Daniyel up. As we gathered together on the platform, we gazed about at the houses: simple structures on piles, some with steps going down to small vessels moored underneath, and other, larger residences connected to the main platform by boardwalks. The water was flat and rich with moss and weed that tinted the crisply mirrored images of the houses with a green glass sheen. The place was quiet, as if all were in the middle of a siesta.
“Do we call out? Ring something?” Lian asked uncertainly.
“No,” said Tarik. “We have been seen.”
His voice sounded a little strange, but when I saw the canoe and the people who were paddling it, I understood. Thus far, we had visited two settlements, both of which had indeed registered a significant amount of taSadiri heritage according to Dr. Daniyel’s genetic tests but whose inhabitants had in culture and appearance so resembled the average Cygnian as to be unremarkable. These ones, now—they had the hair.