The Color of Distance tcod-1

by Amy Thomson

  Juna thought of trying to explain how radio worked, with her limited vocabulary, and shook her head. “Hard tell you,” she explained, hoping she was using the right words.

  “I talk them?” Ukatonen asked.

  “You talk me, I tell them what say you. Good?”

  Ukatonen flickered agreement.

  Juna set up the computer for visual and vocal recording, guided Ukatonen within range of the computer’s camera, then nodded to him to begin.

  “Formal greetings, Eerin’s people. I am Ukatonen, an enkar {untranslatable social status term}. I speak to you through Eerin. The village of Lyanan {untranslatable village place name} is in {untranslatable} because the {long list of plant, tree, and animal names}”—here Ukatonen pointed to the burnt, black gap in the green forest—“is through your actions, no longer there. The village is angry. What may be done to bring {untranslatable}?”

  Juna sighed. This was going to be difficult. She looked at the charred expanse of burnt forest, destroyed during normal Survey sterilization pro cedures before leaving the planet. It helped ensure that no Terran bacteria survived to contaminate the planet. If the Survey had known about the aliens, they would have acted differently. It would be up to her to make reparations.

  “The alien sends formal greetings from its people, and wants to know what we are going to do about that piece of forest that we burned down. Apparently it belonged to a nearby village. I will do what I can to make reparations. Please advise.” Juna sent along the visual clip of the alien’s speech with her translation for their computers to analyze.

  Juna nodded at Ukatonen. “It’s done,” she told him.

  Ukatonen’s ears spread wide. He watched the radio intently, waiting for a reply.

  Juna touched Ukatonen on the shoulder. He looked at her.

  “My people are far,” Juna said, gesturing into the sky. “They not speak—” She paused; duration was one of the aspects of skin speech that she didn’t understand. She pointed at the sun, which was a low, bright spot behind heavy clouds. “It be night when they speak back to us.”

  Ukatonen’s ears spread wide again. “Where your people? How they hear you?”

  Juna hesitated. It was against Contact regs to explain space travel to such low-tech people. She had half a dozen plausible cover stories, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to lie to Ukatonen.

  So going slowly, groping painfully for the words that she needed, she explained that their planet circled a star, and that her people were from another star, and had traveled there in a ship. She had to use rocks as visual aids, but eventually the aliens understood.

  Ukatonen shook his head. “Not can be,” he said, deeply purple. Anito, watching, echoed his words.

  “It true. My people do,” Juna insisted. “I speak my people. That”—she pointed at the silver radio tower—“throws my—” she paused, not knowing the word for “voice,” or even if the aliens had such a word in their language—“words to them. They understand my words; they talk back.” She pointed to the tower again. “That catches their words and shows them to me.”

  Ukatonen looked from the tower to Juna and back again, and turned an odd shade of puce, probably indicative of doubt or disbelief. “Not can be,” Ukatonen repeated.

  “My people can do,” Juna insisted.

  Doubt, wonder, and a tinge of fear rippled across the alien’s skin. “When your people return?”

  Juna shrugged and fought back a sudden surge of fear and grief. She shook her head. “Many, many, many—” She paused, and pointed to the eastern horizon, sweeping her arm across the sky to the west, the pattern for sun on her chest.

  Ukatonen supplied what Juna hoped was the term for “day.”

  “Many days,” she said. She tried to explain what a year was, gesturing to the rocks she had used to represent their sun and planet, but Ukatonen shook his head.

  Juna searched for the words to explain, but couldn’t find them. She picked up a pebble. “My people’s ship,” she said.

  Ukatonen rippled understanding.

  “My people leave,” Juna moved the pebble farther from the planet. “They go so far and—” Juna picked up the pebble and threw it. It landed several meters away. “Now they can’t hear my words. I can’t hear their words.”

  Juna picked up another, fist-sized stone. “My people’s sun.” She picked up another rock. “My people’s world,” she said. She picked up the ship pebble and placed it beside the rock representing her home planet. “My people leave your sun, go my sun. Then they come back.” She picked up the ship pebble and tossed it back toward the aliens’ solar system. “Many, many, many days.”

  Ukatonen turned puce again.

  “My people can do,” Juna insisted. “This day, my people hear my words. When the sun is there”—she pointed at the eastern horizon—“my people no longer hear my words. I wait many, many, many days before they come back. I am—” She paused, not knowing the word for “alone” in the aliens’ language. She flushed a dark, funereal grey and looked away, as the depth of her isolation sunk in.

  Ukatonen’s knuckles brushed her shoulder. Juna looked up. Anito was gone; she and Ukatonen were alone beneath the gleaming metal tower.

  “I am like you,” Ukatonen said, “Always one person. Never with others. I understand. I am erikar,” he said, using a term that Juna didn’t understand, though she had seen it before. “Enkar are always one person.”

  Ukatonen got up and walked back over the rocky expanse of the cliff mto the jungle. Juna stared after the alien until he disappeared into the solid mass of green. She returned to her reports feeling as though a tight cord binding her heart had been released. She worked steadily, updating and finishing reports on the aliens and their ecosystem. She finished her work as the sun touched the horizon.

  She stood up and stretched, feeling empty. Every detail in her log had been transferred to the ship, she had answered all of the questions she could. The Survey had everything she knew about the aliens. She got up and walked to the edge of the cliff. Clouds of seabirds whirled to and fro, riding the rising air currents. One of them rose up from beneath the edge of the cliff, hanging a couple of meters in front of her, holding its position with tiny movements of its iridescent blue-grey wings and tail. It wasn’t a true bird; its face was scaled and it had a toothy lizard’s snout instead of a beak, but it filled the place of a sea gull in the ecosystem. It regarded her with its beady, enigmatic black eyes for a moment, then slid away on the wind, arcing out over the ocean until she lost it amongst the other birds.

  Her mother would have loved to see that. She had always gloried in birds, especially seabirds. Juna remembered that when they still lived on Earth her mother used to take her to the coast. They would sit on the cliffs, watching the birds fly. They would hover just as this bird did, on the strong updraft from a windward cliff. She remembered her mother, standing near the edge of a cliff, the wind streaming back through her sun veils, laughing at some hovering bird.

  She turned back to the radio tower. She had a little over an hour before her final transmission window closed. She wanted to send a letter to her father, and take care of as many personal details as she could before the ship entered transition.

  “Father, this is Juna,” she dictated. “The good news is that I’m still alive. By now the Survey has told you the bad news. It’s going to be a long time until I see you again. I miss you, and Toivo, and Danan. I won’t be entirely alone. There are aliens here. They’re very strange, but I think we will come to understand each other better. The world is beautiful, and I’m the first human ever to survive without an environment suit on a living world.

  “The aliens here are like zero-gee trapeze dancers, only more graceful and agile. I’ve gotten very good at climbing. I had to, in order to keep up with them. I spend most of my time in the trees now.”

  Juna paused, not quite knowing how to say the next few necessary words.

  “If I don’t come back, please give my extra Survey
pin to Danan. I know he’d like to have it. Keep half my money for Danan, and the other half should go to you and Toivo.

  “Just before I wrote this letter, I stood on the cliffs and watched some birds flying out over the ocean. It made me think of Mama. Please put some flowers on her grave for me. Tell Toivo and Danan that I love them. I love you too. Take care of yourself.”

  Juna replayed the message. There was so much that she wanted to say, but she was tired and drained by the long reports she had filed. She thought of her father, stocky and slightly bowlegged, as he walked between his vines. Tears rose to her eyes. He was getting old. Would he still be there when she came home?

  She sent other messages, to family, friends, and to her ex-wives and husbands. Survey members shouldn’t bond with the system-bound. She hadn’t been able to keep up with her group marriage. She was away for years at a time, and the marriage couldn’t stand the separation. Still, she cherished the memories, and from time to time she would visit, to catch up with her former spouses and to see how the children had grown.

  Her computer’s chrono chimed softly, reminding her that she had twenty minutes left. After that, her messages wouldn’t reach the Kotani Manx before it made trie jump to hyperspace. She finished her last letter and sent it only a few minutes before her transmission window closed. Then she got up and walked to the cliff edge again. The sun was a red ember on the horizon. As she watched, it sank below the sea and vanished. Juna went back to the forest.

  Ukatonen and Anito were waiting for her. They beckoned her on, their words glowing like fireflies in the dark jungle, to the nest they had built in a tree near the edge of the forest. Juna was relieved that she wouldn’t have to face a village full of curious aliens tonight.

  “When your people speak back to us?” Ukatonen asked her when they were settled.

  Juna shrugged. It would be almost two hours before the ship responded to Ukatonen’s translated message.

  “We eat, go out and wait. Their words come,” Juna told them.

  She was so exhausted that she was almost looking forward to the Kotani Manx’s final transmission. At least then she could get some sleep.

  They ate, washed themselves in a nearby stream, and filed out to the radio beacon to await word from the ship.

  Twenty minutes later, Kinsey, the Alien Contact specialist, signed on, telling Juna that he wanted to speak to Ukatonen. He paused for a couple of minutes, so that Juna and Ukatonen could prepare themselves, then began.

  “My name is Arthur Kinsey. On behalf of the Solarian United Government, the Interstellar Survey, and the Interstellar Survey Vessel Kotani Manx, I accept your formal greetings, and offer you ours in return. We deeply regret the destruction of the forest. If we had known that there were intelligent aliens with land-rights to that section of forest, we would never have disturbed it. We will do our best to make reparations for such damage when we return. We thank you for the care and healing of Dr. Saari, and ask that you continue to treat her well until we return. We will do our best to repay you for your efforts in this matter. Our people live very far away. We estimate that it will be four to six of your years before we are able to return, but we will return for Dr. Saari, and to learn more about you. Until then, we wish you peace and prosperity. Thank you. This is Arthur Kinsey signing off.”

  Juna frowned, and glanced up at Ukatonen, who was leaning against one of the beacon supports, ears spread expectantly. This was going to be very hard to translate.

  “The person who is speaking sends greetings from all of my people. We apologize for burning (here Juna appended as much of the detailed description of the forest as she could remember). My people will try to make this better when they come back for me. He also thanks you for taking care of me, and says that my people will be very grateful for that. He says that my people live very far away, and that it will be many, many, many days before they come back. He also says that we want to learn more about your people. He asks you to teach me about your people so that I may teach my people when they return. He hopes that you have good hunting and much good food until they come back. He thanks you.”

  Ukatonen looked puzzled. “That was very strange,” he said at last.

  Juna touched him on the shoulder. “I not do a very good job. I don’t have the words. I try again when I know more,” she offered. “This person knows only what I have told him about you. Your people and my people are very different.”

  “Yes,” Ukatonen said with a glowing ripple of amusement. “I see that.”

  Juna smiled and rippled with shared amusement, then turned back to the radio, to listen for more messages and instructions. The two aliens touched her shoulder and slipped back into the forest.

  Following his message, Kinsey downloaded the Survey’s alien contact protocols, and noninterference guidelines for alien cultures. Juna rolled her eyes when she saw them. They were completely impractical. She had broken the rules on food and personal contact only minutes into her first meeting with Anito. Her explanation of space travel to the aliens was in direct violation of the technology transfer dictates, as was using the computer in their presence. These guidelines were for someone with a Survey base to retreat to between contacts. She simply couldn’t follow them.

  She also was not empowered to make treaties, or agree to reparations. Juna sighed. She would be returning to the radio beacon periodically to send updates to the Survey satellites so that they would have a complete record in case she was lost or killed. She needed the goodwill of the neighboring village. To get that, she might need to make up for her fellow humans’ mistakes.

  After Kinsey’s report, Morale Officer Chang came on with another of her sententious little speeches. She expressed deep concern over Juna’s link with the alien, and ordered her not to do it again. Juna turned down the sound. Leaving the computer to record her messages, she got up and walked to the edge of the cliff. Sitting cross-legged near the edge, she looked out at the quiet alien night. The shadows of shy night birds flickered past her as they emerged from their holes in the cliff-side and flew out to sea to fish.

  The sea was phosphorescent tonight. The waves glowed green as they struck the shoreline. Out at sea a school of fish left a trail of brilliant green streaks in the water…

  She used to come out here in her environment suit, before she had been lost, just to watch the stars and the ocean. How different it all seemed, now that she wasn’t trapped inside her suit. Then she had been hot and stuffy, unable to feel the night breeze. The clatter and hum of the base’s machinery, and the whirring of her suit had drowned out the cries of the birds and the shimmering sounds of the insects.

  It was a beautiful night. Only a few clouds obscured the heavens. Juna looked up at the stars. Sol with its jeweled necklace of colonies, and the bright, diseased gem that was Earth, was not visible. It could only be seen from the planet’s northern hemisphere. Just as well, she thought to herself. If she could see Earth, she would yearn for it even more.

  She began to hum a tune her mother had loved, an old tune from before The Collapse. Her mother had learned it as a child, and passed it along to her daughter. It was about a bird called the albatross, one of the first Antarctic birds to die as the ozone hole spread north. The long-winged, graceful birds spent nine months flying alone over the open ocean, returning to the same mate every year. Juna sang to herself about going away and coming back again, about someone waiting for her return. As she sang, her grief eased.

  She fell silent, watching the stars. She heard the sound of surf pounding against the cliffs, the thin high cries of the night birds, and the sound of her own breathing. The computer chimed, signaling the time that the Kotani Maru made the jump. She was alone now, an alien on an alien world. She got up and walked into the jungle, where Anito and Ukatonen slept. She would parcel out the news and messages from the Survey ship, making them last as long as she could. They would be the only human voices she would hear for years.

  Chapter 9

  It’s crazy,” An
ito told Ukatonen as they watched the new creature making noises at a box built into the base of the strange tree made of silvery death-colored stone. “When it found out that its people went away, it went crazy.”

  “But where did Eerin’s people go?” Ukatonen asked Anito, referring to the new creature by the name he had given it.

  Anito disliked the name. She didn’t believe the new creature was intelligent enough to deserve a name. The enkar had even started calling the creature by the same pronoun used for a female Tendu. It made the creature more like a real person. As far as she was concerned, the new creature barely qualified as an animal, and should be referred to as such.

  “I don’t know,” Anito said. “They’re gone. Isn’t that enough?”

  A ripple of exasperation passed over Ukatonen’s body. “You’re an elder now. It’s time to start thinking like one. You must think past today. What if the new creatures come back and destroy more forest? What if they’ve gone somewhere else and are destroying the forest there? Remember, these creatures are your atwa. Whatever they do, you are responsible for it.”

  Anito looked away, angered by the unfairness of it all. She had only taken on the new creature to humor Ilto. Now she was responsible for things that had happened far from her village.

  Ukatonen touched her gently on the shoulder. Anito looked around. “Someone must find out what happened here and how to stop it from happening again. Someone must be responsible. But this isn’t a load that you can carry alone. We’ll do it together.”

  Anito looked away again, fighting back a dark red wave of anger and frustration. She looked out over the black ashes of the destroyed forest. She had never seen anything like this. Lightning would sometimes take out three or four trees, or a mud slide would clear out a patch of hillside, but never had she contemplated such an expanse of devastation. It still felt like an impossibility, even as she looked at it. She thought about this happening somewhere else, to some other village, to her own village, and the venom sacs on her back tightened in anger and fear.