by Patty Jansen
Karana walked along the aisle carrying Ayshada, who was fast asleep, his arm dangling down her tunic. She sat on a bench against the front wall of the cabin, away from the others, holding him on her lap. The remaining people—Amarru’s security guards and the lawyers Reya and Mereeni—went into some kind of security station next to the door, where they spoke to a man who was part of the craft’s crew. I kept an eye on Veyada, but he appeared to have finally relaxed.
The soft cream-coloured carpet had roused the curiosity of Ynggi. He knelt and ran his hands over it and pulled the fluff to see if it came loose.
It was easy to mistake the almost childish Pengali curiosity for naivety. Even I had fallen into this trap until delving more into Pengali culture for the sake of this trip.
That was the trouble with Pengali: they never drew attention to themselves. They were always silent, in the background, beavering away, often in the dark, because they were nocturnal.
I knew no people who had ever been inside the traditional Pengali settlements, but I’d heard people use the word hive for it. They were big structures crafted between a couple of the huge rainforest trees. Each settlement would have several floors with living spaces and dorms. Truly traditional settlements would only use local materials and Pengali technology, which included extensive equipment to cut and polish glass-stone—that is, diamond, the source of all this trouble. Some of the upwellings and caves on the edge of the escarpment yielded solid chunks of diamond that required two people to lift them. The Pengali chipped, cut and polished these into windowpanes, ornaments and eating bowls and drinking glasses. They had even made eyeglasses prior to the advent of eye correction treatments, because there was a market for them, and Pengali had the skill, maths and precision to produce them. Pengali had been exporting their products to Miran at the time when there was still a land route between Barresh and Miran. Their farming practices had been adopted by what was today the food bowl of Asto: the Mirani western plateau centred around the farming community of Bendara. It was as easy to underestimate the Pengali as it was to be intimidated by Coldi bluff.
More recent studies, including the human tree project at the hospital in Barresh, had found that Pengali possessed extraordinary practical and spatial skills, and this made it logical that Pengali often worked as operators of machines: usually boats, but lately also aircraft. The Pilot’s Guild had a big office in Barresh. Many of their freight pilots were Pengali. But all of those were from the early urban families, and had worked their way up out of the mires of Far Atok, the largest island of Barresh that was still the home of the poorer communities.
Pengali were a very interesting people, much older than any of the other humans, thought to have split off the human tree much earlier.
I knew it would create some friction with my existing household, but I wanted a Pengali on my staff. I was toying with the idea of asking Ynggi. He was an adaptable sort, who didn’t seem prone to doing strange and unexpected things. He was sensible; he had done some study and lived in town, and when he lived with the tribe, he used to speak to the Coldi couriers who came directly to the tribe.
Thayu didn’t agree with having a Pengali on the staff. I could feel that. “Eirani would have a fit.”
“Since when do you care about what Eirani thinks?”
She pulled one corner of her mouth up and grinned. She and Eirani had spent a lot of time bickering when I first came to Barresh.
The crew shut the doors to the craft. Engines whined and we started moving.
The craft came with a steward, who came to me and told me that lunch would be served once we were in the air, and did any of these people need anything special?
I resisted telling him that many of “these people” could understand his question just as well as I could, because he happened to have addressed us in the proper Coldi manner: when speaking to a group, always go through the leader. Although I didn’t think he’d done it by design.
So I just answered the question, quietly already annoyed that the same old attitude had still not shifted here, that people on Earth were still reluctant to speak to gamra people. The steward went off to a little cubicle at the front of the cabin, where I assumed a mini-kitchen to be.
Amarru’s two Indrahui security personnel had found something to talk about with Evi. Both were of the nameless, faceless mould that had once produced Evi and Telaris, security personnel one addressed as mashara and never asked for their names or anything personal. I’d since learned that at Indrahui, not giving out personal information and not getting attached to people was a way of protecting one’s emotional state, when, as fighters, it was likely that the person who had become your friend would not survive. Neither Evi nor Telaris were forthcoming with emotions, but I hoped the two brothers no longer felt faceless in my household. I had not used the word mashara to address them for a long time, and then only on the most formal of occasions.
The jet taxied over the airport. I looked out the window at the city where I’d lived for four years in a cramped apartment at the Exchange with Nicha. I hadn’t spent any more time than a few hours at a time in the city since, and it had changed a lot, I’d been told.
When we lived there, the world had come out of a deep depression and the vibe was positive. There was hope that Earth would join gamra and that new markets would open up and all the refugees would find homes and there would be technology to turn countries that had turned into deserts back into their former agricultural regions.
None of that had eventuated. There were more refugees than ever before, giant tracts of Africa and the Middle East were wasteland and the home of bandits, and no one had any money for any of the beautiful projects that, if they had been started at all, were woefully behind.
That was fertile ground for radical movements.
Athens was tired of being in two worlds. It was tired of receiving a constant stream of refugees both from gamra and North Africa. It kept on plugging along, because it had done so for over four millennia, but the mood had turned grim.
It showed in the greyness of the vista over the city as we took off, tainted brown with the haze of smoke from people burning rubbish to fuel their cooking stoves. So many people were so poor. So few people were disgustingly rich. It was a sad world, and not one I could fix and one I shouldn’t turn my back on, but I had no idea what I could do to help.
The jet levelled out.
A glance over my shoulder revealed that the Pengali were looking out the window, softly discussing the things they saw.
Reya and Veyada had definitely sorted out their superiority and were talking about legal things. Everything about their behaviour showed that Reya was the subordinate. He did not look Veyada in the eye, and kept studiously out of Thayu’s way, because she was Veyada’s superior. When I came past, he cast me uncertain glances. Likely, he was getting mixed messages: from Veyada, that I stood at the top of the association, and from looking at me that he didn’t feel any of this.
Mereeni sat on the corner of the u-shaped bench. She was looking at something on her reader, ostensibly avoiding Veyada’s glances. Sheydu sat in between the two, also intently “listening” to the conversation between Veyada and Reya, and Thayu was glaring at the lot of them from her seat next to me, or maybe she was just staring into space.
I didn’t like this new taciturn Thayu, but it would be temporary, I’d been assured.
Sounds of clinking cutlery and plates came from the door at the front of the cabin and, not much later, the steward appeared wheeling a trolley that contained a tray of snacks for each table.
Fruit, pieces of cheese, little square sandwich cubes with various fillings.
Nations of Earth was already laying on the favours. They had even gone out of their way to offer some Coldi-style food. Not red-coded, because little of that was imported, but Coldi-produced locally.
Not for the first time, I wondered who was paying for this, and why Abri’s testimony justified the expense.
At the first sight
of food, the Pengali had abandoned their study of the world outside and attacked the tray like a bunch of starved dogs. Bread, cheese, salmon sandwiches all vanished at record speed. Abri was highly amused by the concept of a strawberry, and, when she bit it, gave a startled look that made the other Pengali burst out in snorting laughter. Maybe she had expected it to be some kind of fish.
Veyada got into the salmon before the Pengali could start on the tray from our table as well. Reya looked on with a you eat that stuff? look on his face.
Being a Coldi from Hedron, Mereeni did not have a problem eating meat, and she tried the fish as well.
“It’s good,” she said, and then the Pengali started asking her about the food at Hedron, so she joined their table. There was a lot of laughter.
Thayu watched her with narrowed eyes. I felt her discomfort through the feeder.
“Are you annoyed because she is from Hedron or because of the way she behaves?” I asked her when I sat down next to her.
I was wading into deep water here, because much of the interactions between them would be determined by the sheya instinct, and hostile as they seemed to me, they might not even see anything wrong with them.
She snorted. “I’m not annoyed. Veyada is. She is rude to him, even if he is her superior.”
“I thought they didn’t have sheya at Hedron.”
“They do. They just force their people to suppress it.”
“Same as people in the Outer Circle used to force people from the Ezmi clan to fake it?”
She gave me the stink-eye. Thayu hated politics. I teased her with it sometimes. The pregnancy made her grumpier than usual. She was probably tired. We all were.
I reached out, briefly touching her hand.
“I’ll handle the politics, right?”
“Then you must do something to settle the issue between Veyada and the Hedron lawyer, because it won’t resolve without your interference.”
This was the part about Coldi associations that frightened me and that had kept me for so long from accepting that I was part of one, let alone at the head of it. When these types of pathological disagreements happened, I didn’t feel what I should do. Speak calming words and smooth it over? Take both aside and give them a talking to? Or, in line with typical Coldi behaviour, should I burst in with all guns blazing and issue threats? Not that I would ever say anything threatening to Veyada anyway. Respected him too much.
“That is your problem. You’re afraid to act because you think that he will be angry. He will not be angry. He will do as you say and respect you.”
Boy, she was cranky.
“Do you want anything to eat?” I asked her. “Before it all disappears.”
“I’m not that hungry.”
More likely, she didn’t trust the food on offer, but I knew better than to press the issue, even if she was pregnant and even if it worried me. Weren’t pregnant women supposed to be always hungry?
Damn it, did Thayu really have to go like this on me now? “How about you have a rest until we arrive?”
She shrugged. I saw in her eyes that she would love to sleep, but thought she couldn’t until we had arrived in a safe place. Because protecting the association was her ultimate job.
I decided to solve the problem for her. I undid my seatbelt and pushed myself up. “I’m going to have a chat with a few people.”
Thayu could be really stubborn when it came to the matter of sleep. I was tired, too, but felt the same about sleep and safe places, and I was really bad at sleeping in transport, besides.
I thought Thayu hated for other people to watch her sleep, and the pregnancy made her inability to sleep more of a cause of grumpiness. Maybe something else bothered her. I didn’t know. It worried me. There were so many things going on that if she really had a problem, she would need to be clear about it and speak up or no one would notice.
I crossed the cabin and went to join the Pengali table.
Not a crumb of bread was left on the plate that stood in the middle.
The Pengali had gone back to studying the landscape outside the window—the snow-covered Alps. Mereeni looked over their shoulders, but they all turned to me when I sat down.
“Did you like lunch?” I asked.
“Food is good,” Abri said, and Kita and Ynggi both waved their tails as sign of agreement.
“Tell me,” Ynggi said. “I see no water. Where do these people catch their fish?”
“There are oceans, just not in this part of the world.”
“Yes, I saw the oceans. The one we saw when we took off, or the bigger one over the horizon?” He pointed with his tail. “Or the one on the other side of the continent?” He pointed his tail the other way, and it missed Mereeni’s arm by a hair’s width. She raised her eyebrows.
“So, which ocean? They are different, yes? Cold, warm, deep, shallow, rough, rocky sandy.”
“Basically.”
“What sort of ocean does this fish come from?”
“I’m not sure.” Where did people catch salmon? If it had even been real salmon, not that artificial stuff, which I didn't know either because the salmon had been so popular that I hadn’t gotten any.
We talked about the mysterious strawberry. Yes, it was a fruit, not a sea creature.
Kita wanted to know, “But what about the specks on the outside? Those are for disguising itself, are they not?”
I said that they were seeds and also that fruit disguised itself to avoid being eaten by birds.
“Birds?” She repeated the strange Isla word.
“They fly like bats, but they have feathers.” And there was no decent translation for the word feathers because Barresh had no birds, only lots of very large insects and flying crustaceans, and bats. Lots of them, too.
And then they wanted to know about the cheese, and were slightly horrified by the idea that one stole the mother’s milk from another animal to make little yellow squishy cubes.
Did they think the cheese tasted bad? I asked.
Ynggi rolled his tongue over his front teeth. “No, but . . . it’s strange.”
We dissected the entire contents of the snack tray.
Mereeni watched, but said little. Her expression was intelligent and attentive. I found her quite attractive. Many Coldi could have really flat, emotionless faces, but hers had more angles than the typical Coldi. Then there was the curly hair, which made her appearance unusual.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Thayu lying down over two seats, fast asleep. I really had to give her a bit more space to rest and recover.
Food was always a great point of conversation with Pengali and it occupied us until the plane started to descend and I had to go back to my seat and had to wake up Thayu, because there was nowhere else for me to sit. She was grumpy about that, too, and wiped her face, even if the impression of the seatbelt buckle in her cheek did not disappear immediately. I didn’t have to ask her, and bringing attention to it would only make her grumpier, but I didn’t think she was feeling very well.
The craft descended over flat fields where water glistened between dams that surrounded villages. It was midafternoon, golden light streaming into the cabin. Below us the odd clouds looked like fluffy balls of cotton wool, coming ever closer. Their shadows drifted over the water and occasionally I could spot the shadow of the jet.
The tapestry of dammed-in islands and water was extremely pretty, helped by the fact that it was tulip season and those islands of habitation—lower than sea level—were painted in stripes of red, yellow, purple and white. The surrounding orchards and grass fields were extremely green, dotted through with farmhouses.
“It’s very pretty,” Thayu said next to me. She still sounded a bit woolly from sleep.
Yes, it was pretty. In the distance I could see the white sand dunes across the marshy delta.
Rotterdam was an island with tall buildings surrounded by a couple of additional islands and linked by raised roadways. The airport floated outside the city. Here and there ro
se additional tall buildings of other towns, including the sleeper cities and industrial estates and the older, flood-prone suburbs where the lower classes lived.
The craft went ever lower and, not much later, we touched down. Not at the main terminal, but the VIP lounge to the side, where we had to walk down the steps onto the tarmac. The sky might be clear and the sun bright, but the breeze was cold. Thayu wrapped her arms around herself and pulled her shoulders up. The look in her eyes was feral.
Again, Nations of Earth had sent a bus for us—the right size this time—and the stiff-faced airport personnel loaded our luggage on board. The bus was a driverless vehicle so I asked the baggage handlers about the details of where we were staying. I had to see Margarethe.
“I don’t know, Mr Wilson,” was the reply. “I can have a look.” Every time I came here, I had to get used to hearing this proper Earth version of Isla. What I had learned to speak was technically the off-Earth colonists’ dialect Cosla, and there were a good number of differences between the two.
The man climbed the steps into the bus and touched the screen on the control panel. He frowned. “It doesn’t give an address, only a code.”
“It does that sometimes,” his colleague said, halfway through taking a bag off the airport trolley. “Security reasons.”
I asked, “Any way to find out? We’re a bit late, I have a meeting to attend and I want to make sure I can arrange to get there on time.”
He touched the screen a few more times, but shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you could find out, but I don’t know how.”
Well, damn it.
“Is there a problem?” Veyada said.
“I was supposed to meet . . .” I glanced at the luggage handlers, who had gone back to operating the machines. I could never assume that people wouldn’t speak Coldi, and I definitely didn’t want them to hear Margarethe’s name. “It’s going to be hard because I have no idea where we’re staying.”
“It can’t be too far away.”
That was true. “Somebody will be waiting for us when we get there.”
“It would be unwise to take everyone to the meeting anyway.”