by Karen Lord
I looked at Qeturah for confirmation, but she merely shook her head helplessly. “I’m all at sea with this telepathy business, Grace. You’re going to have to trust Dllenahkh.”
“Well, that’s a given,” I said easily.
It was a small thing, but the moment I said it, Tarik flashed a brief glare at Nasiha, then retreated once more behind a veneer of propriety.
———
Because there was only one medtable and limited space, they put an extra cot in the shuttle and dotted us all over with sensors to record the unusual event. Then they turned on the environment controls, turned off the lights, and shut the door. For a short while, there was the glow of Dllenahkh’s handheld as he sat on the cot and made some last-minute notes. Finally he turned it off, and the darkness was absolute. I heard the cot creak slightly as he lay down.
“Are you going to stay awake all night?” I said softly.
“If necessary,” he replied just as quietly.
“I may snore,” I warned after a pause.
“I shall try not to listen,” he said with mild amusement.
“Is something wrong between Nasiha and Tarik?” It might have seemed a nosy question, except that it came out in the plaintive tones of a child wondering why Mommy and Daddy are arguing.
“Tarik is struggling to find the right way to deal with a certain matter. Nasiha is concerned for him. They will be all right, Grace.”
There was a very long pause during which the silence rang loudly in my all-too-awake ears.
“You going to tell me about the kissing thing or not?”
He exhaled audibly. “I suppose it was too much to hope that you would forget that. Kissing is not a Sadiri custom. To us it seems … unhygienic. And yet much of Terran romance appears to center around the practice, to the point where potential partners may even be rejected solely on the basis of a lack of proficiency in this area.”
“Well, it is rather unhygienic,” I admitted, “but there are variations, you know, ranging from a kiss on the cheek to the full-on, bite-for-blood kiss. There are plenty of Terran cultures that don’t find the extreme versions attractive.”
“Where do you fall on this spectrum of preference?” he asked.
For a moment I had a kind of mental stumble that made me glad Dllenahkh hadn’t linked to me yet: He’s asking me how I like my kisses! Then I pulled myself together. “I suppose I’m a bit tame by urban standards. I prefer a no-fluids approach myself, just minimal moisture at the most.” I was very proud of my clinical tone. “Um … does your culture have an alternative to the kiss?”
I heard him sit up, felt him take my right hand. He gently uncurled my fingers and turned my palm toward him. I opened my mouth to say, “Oh, yeah, that thing Nasiha and Tarik do.” But the words died on my tongue.
First he simply touched his fingertips to mine, which was pleasant enough. Then he lightly traced the length of my fingers, moving slowly, a low hum of sensation for the front of my hand, a warm tingle for the back. Finally, he set his palm to mine.
“Ohh!” I exclaimed, enlightened and entranced.
It felt like warm, golden light—not the muted gold of late afternoon but something more sharply metallic, conducting its own electricity along the nerves in my hand directly to my brain and throughout my body. There was a ripple like lighthearted laughter, a more solemn surge like a deep contented sigh, and then a comforting ebb and flow like the rocking of an ocean wave … very soothing … very relaxing … very …
“… good of you to put me to bed, Councillor,” I said, smothering my chagrin under a jesting tone.
Memory returned to me, bright and sharp as life, but strange as déjà vu in a hall of fractured mirrors.
“We sometimes forget that most Cygnians need at least eight hours of sleep,” Dllenahkh said apologetically as he set down the last piece of baggage in the hotel lounge. “In the future, we will try to arrange our meetings to take place at a more convenient hour and within a shorter time frame.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Councillor,” I said with a teasing grin. Then, much to my dismay, I saw Qeturah glancing in my direction as if considering whether or not to deal with me in public. I decided not to give her the chance. It was the work of a moment to slip out of the hotel with Nasiha on the pretext of a quick stop in town to take a look at a nearby craft market.
I hadn’t considered the extent to which clothes are protection. Ordinarily, Nasiha would have been wearing her Science Council blues and I would have been wearing one of my Civil Service uniforms, but we had both taken to wearing civilian clothes bought in that region. That must have been why they thought we were fair game.
One moment we were walking down the road, and then we were gone—dragged into an alley, choking rags drenched in some sedative pressed over our faces. Nasiha was too strong and too quick for them. I saw the man who grabbed her go flying over her head. At that point, I blacked out completely.
When I came back to consciousness, it was in a paralyzed body. I could feel the vibration of an aircar under me, but I could neither open my eyes nor move. I heard shouts and the sound of running feet, and then I felt the sudden crush of a quick liftoff. I struggled and finally cracked open my eyes just as they picked me up by the wrists and ankles and swung me out of the open door of the rising car.
The aircar hadn’t risen very far, perhaps no more than five meters. If I’d had the use of my limbs, I would have feared at most some contusions, a broken wrist perhaps. But I was limp and helpless, and I waited to feel all my bones break and my skull shatter on the hard ground.
But that’s not the way it went.
I collided not with the unforgiving ground but with a pair of strong arms and a broad chest, all connected to a form and face that I knew well.
You caught me, I murmured to the presence in my mind.
Of course, he answered, but below the calm was the fear and wonder of having arrived in the nick of time.
Nasiha?
I saw an image of her, wrap torn away and face furious, spinning around helplessly in a now-empty alley as the gang got away through the close gaps between the buildings like rats scurrying into a maze. I saw an image of Tarik outside the hotel, face peaceful one moment, then wide-eyed with horror, sprinting away instinctively to find her via the telepathic link they shared. In three minutes, Lian and Dllenahkh drew up in a groundcar and hauled him in. Tarik found Nasiha all right, but it was Dllenahkh who found me, reaching out with all his strength to sense my half-conscious awareness, as faint as the whirr of a hummingbird’s wings.
I was unreasonably perky when the drugs wore off. “Can’t remember a thing!” I said cheerfully. “Look at me—I’m walking, I’m talking, I’m fine!”
Qeturah scanned me, scowling at her instruments as they confirmed my words. “Very well. But you’re not coming with us to Piedra. You’re on twenty-four hours’ rest and observation.”
I think Nasiha would have stayed with me if Tarik hadn’t tried to order her to do so. In the end it was Lian who volunteered to watch over me.
“Poor Tarik,” I said, thinking of his silent shows of anger and understanding at last how even a Sadiri, especially a Sadiri, could be almost incapacitated by fear for the well-being of his wife and unborn child. The fear felt like falling …
… falling through darkness … falling forever …
… because there was nothing to fall to. Deep space had no pull, no solidity. There was only hopeless spinning in the void and tumbling fear within.
What life begins, death must end …
… but so much death had its own gravity well, impossible to escape, an open grave that had drawn millions from existence—friends, strangers, enemies, lovers—turning everyday loss to utter loss.
He was falling, so I caught him, grasping his wrist as the arc of his orbit passed me. I tugged him down to the ground and turned him right side up so he could see the huge silver moon rising over the horizon. I touched the tip of my foref
inger to his, kindling a golden glow, and placed my hand gently over his heart as I whispered the timeless cliché for all those who no longer had voices to tell him.
The light from the opening shuttle door woke me. They came tiptoeing in.
Shhhh, I signed one-handed, and pointed down at the cot.
His hand loosely gripping mine, chest rising and falling slightly, Dllenahkh was asleep.
REMEMBRANCE DAY
Something changed. It was bizarre. We had been side by side in the dark, hands touching, minds touching, and some of that intimacy lingered in speech and shared silence, but I still could not find a way to ask him directly about his nightmare. True, much of our time together was in a purely professional setting, but even so, I wasn’t sure I had earned that right. I read voraciously instead, my desire to impress giving way to an insatiable curiosity about old Sadira, New Sadira, and the disaster in between.
The hidden motive behind my new obsession was not professional but personal. During our close communication, I had seen myself through Dllenahkh’s eyes. It had been disconcerting, even alien. I found myself wondering how the average Sadiri would view me, something I’d hardly cared about when I was visiting the settlement. The standards for courtesy and professionalism could not be the same as the standards for … friendship. Kissing was a minor detail. I’m no Gilda; I didn’t want to experiment. I wanted to get things right, and I had no idea how to go about it.
I stood before the mirror, paused and pondering, a stick of kohl held loosely in my fingers. Everything else was as usual. I was wearing a long black skirt and a belted white short-sleeved tunic. My wrap remained on the bed in my hotel room. I would go bareheaded tonight and see if I could get accustomed to the unruly, thumb-length fuzz that my hair had become after nearly four months without a trim. A band pulled it back smoothly from my forehead in an attempt at elegance. I looked fine. The concert hall wouldn’t throw me out.
A knock at the door startled me. Lian came into our shared bathroom and in two seconds took in my slightly guilty look and the stick of kohl, which I was sheepishly trying to make disappear behind my back.
“Don’t worry,” Lian said with a gentle, understanding smile. “Some things are too important for teasing.”
“You look sharp tonight,” I said quickly, opting for diversion.
Lian went to the mirror and ran a professional eye over each crease and fastening, each braid and ribbon, ensuring that everything was in place. “It’ll do.”
My colleagues from the Cygnian Military Service and the Interplanetary Science Council had been invited to a Remembrance Ceremony commemorating those who had died in the crisis events that had brought various peoples to Cygnus Beta. The entire team had attended a general service of remembrance earlier in the day, but this was something exclusive for the military and quasi-military bodies, perhaps a special reminder of their mandate to protect humanity.
We were in town for only a couple of days en route to another visit, so I hadn’t been surprised when Qeturah declared she was happy to stay in and rest and Joral said he had to catch up on some work. Dllenahkh, on the other hand, was interested in going to a local performance of Pakal’s Requiem and asked me if I’d like to come along. I said yes. It wasn’t an unusual invitation by any means, yet there I was, standing in the bathroom with a stick of kohl held indecisively in my fingers.
Lian gave the shoulders of the dress uniform one final brush, looked at me, and nodded. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
When the door closed, I laughed a short, quiet laugh at myself and applied the kohl.
Ganymede is a small town, but it prides itself on its history and culture. As a result, the concert hall was impressive and the orchestra magnificent, rivaling even the finest in Tlaxce City. I did not regret my efforts to look my best, and I was foolishly proud of Dllenahkh too. He could take the simplicity of a formal suit and make it as crisp and stylish as any military dress uniform. The small teak elephant I had given him rode discreetly on the collar of his shirt, adding to my satisfaction.
Pakal’s Requiem is very moving but not particularly long, and that suited my mood perfectly that night. We spent a mere thirty minutes with the orchestra and the audience, then went out with the rest of the crowd to mill about in the brightly lit town park. We were both rather silent. It was that kind of evening. Everyone, couples and families alike, seemed a bit hushed and reflective as they walked, as if it were a planetwide holy day.
“Does Sadira have a Day of Remembrance?” I asked Dllenahkh. I meant to say “New Sadira,” but he overlooked the slip and answered directly.
“Different tribes have had different ways and times for honoring their ancestors and fallen heroes. There is nothing as specific as this, although in time there may be.”
I stopped walking and looked up at him with a small frown. “There hasn’t yet been a ceremony for the loss of Sadira? It’s been well over a year.”
He bowed his head slightly, matching my frown, as if genuinely puzzled that such a thing had not yet taken place. “The day was remembered, but not as a formal event. I suppose … I believe we have been too busy to think of such a thing.”
We walked on in silence for a while.
“Although,” he continued in a low voice, “to do so would have meant accepting that there could be no returning to Sadira in our lifetime, nor for many generations to come. I suspect we were not ready to admit that.”
My hand brushed his tentatively. His fingers curled around mine, briefly answering the touch, then withdrew. With a look and a nod, he indicated a bench a little off the path, half screened by high shrubbery. I followed him, and we sat down to watch the people walk by.
“I promised some time ago to tell you the story behind my meeting with the Consul when we were in Karaganda,” he said.
I stared at him, my attention caught. “You did. That was a few months back. Are you ready to tell me now?”
He nodded. “There is much you have learned from reading our government reports. It may be easier for me to explain now.”
I racked my brain, trying to think what could have been in the several extremely dry reports I had read that would have a bearing on our conversation now. I drew a blank, so I simply smiled invitingly and waited for him to begin.
His opening sentence was unexpected. “How did it feel when you were recovering from your injuries and I linked to your mind to speed your body’s healing?”
Dllenahkh would never ask an idle question. I paused and pondered over the memory of it. “It felt like your blood was in my veins. It felt like your neural electricity was in my nerves and brain and spine. I wish I could be clearer. Your awareness was tangled up in mine. Am I making any sense?”
He was looking at me and smiling very gently, somewhere between the proud smile of a master whose student has answered correctly and the fond smile of a friend who finds himself perfectly understood. “Go on. You are doing very well.”
I continued courageously with my wild guessing. “I suppose, from what Nasiha tries to teach me and from what I’ve read of the mindships, that’s how the Sadiri mind works. You extend your awareness of yourself beyond the boundaries of your physical body. It’s generally a benign psionic influence—case in point, when you took over the parts of my body that were not under my conscious control and helped me heal faster. That’s also how a mindship pilot operates. He or she becomes the ship—no, wait … not quite. The ship becomes part of the pilot.”
The smile was my barometer, and it did not falter, though he gave one clarification. “Simplified but not inaccurate. The Sadiri mind, as you say, works in this way. Remember, however, this is due to early training and constant practice. The Sadiri brain is still a human brain, only with more of its potential realized.”
He raised his hands and regarded the palms meditatively, tilting them to catch the warm light of the park’s solar lanterns. “Zhinuvians have a higher concentration of semiconducting material in their skin, which permits them to tal
k to machines with greater ease than to other sentient minds. Their way of navigating their interstellar craft reflects this difference in approach. We too possess some of this ability to interface with man-made intelligence, but our skill mainly lies with the organic, independent mind.”
“I am aware,” I said carefully, because I could not say that I understood, “that your ships, unlike the Zhinuvian ships, are alive, not crafted.”
He lowered his hands and nodded. “I enjoyed our brief time at the mahouts’ village. Their attachment to their elephants is very like how our pilots bond with their ships. It is a lifelong commitment. I have heard of only one instance of a pilot who gave up his ship willingly. That is the story I am about to share with you now.”
He relaxed and leaned back, gently putting aside a few untrimmed leafy twigs from the nearby bushes that tried to dangle about his head like a sparse laurel crown. I turned toward him, drawing my feet onto the seat and under my skirt. A talkative Dllenahkh was rare and most welcome. I would let him speak uninterrupted and ask my questions later.
“During my years of training and study in the mental disciplines, I encountered many people who became pilots. Most of them were off-planet when the disaster struck, and yet a significant number died in futile attempts to transport people from the surface of Sadira.
“One of the survivors came to Cygnus Beta to speak at a special meeting held by an emissary from New Sadira. The entire local Council of our settlement was in attendance to discuss and decide on a matter that would affect us all—a plan to save Sadira.
“What I am about to tell you may sound as far-fetched as the tales of the Caretakers sound to some non-Cygnians, but I ask you to proceed for the moment as if both were equally true.
“A mindship can travel in space and time. For most interstellar journeys, a pilot plots a shortcut through the unseen dimensions of space-time in order to travel swiftly between distant points in the visible dimensions. It is also possible to plot a course that makes use of a second dimension of time, but it is a rare and still-experimental practice which is only done far from the usual shipping routes as our scientists continue to assess and document the effects.