by Brandon Hill
“Oh?” I said, playing along. “And what would appease you, director’s daughter?”
“Merely a bauble,” Sar’vana said, and took the golden necklace into her furry, gray hands. “A token you’ll never miss, such as this? A small price for my silence.”
I could not help but allow a chuckle to escape me. “True. A small price,” I said, taking the necklace and slipping it around her neck. I fastened the clasp, and Sar’vana removed a tiny device from a pouch that was fastened to her belt. A lustrous liquid metal, something like mercury, rose up from a slot at its head and flattened itself into a perfect circle, which reflected the image of her face. She admired herself in this strange mirror for several moments, and squeezed the device. The circle became amorphous once again and shrank back into the tiny slot.
“How do you think it looks?” Sar’vana asked me with a wide, eager grin.
“Beautiful,” I said, surprised at how easily this compliment came out.
“Ever the sweetie,” Sar’vana said, her expression softening. “But I’ve always liked that about you.” She seemed to have forgotten that I embarrassed myself quite richly with those compliments in our childhood, at a time where human girls were “yucky,” and Felyan girls were “just plain weird.” But with Sar’vana, I gave them because they made her happy. Nevertheless, I meant them all, especially this one, from the bottom of my heart.
“I think the silver one would look better on you, Vani,” I said. “I mean, it matches your fur better, as well as your eyes.”
“No, not that one,” Sar’vana said in a tone that was surprisingly dismissive.
“Why not?”
She shifted her gaze from the necklace to me, and then to the necklace again. I’ll tell you what. Look up Na’li and then ask me again.” She flashed me winking grin.
“Na’li?” It was a Felyan word, but I had no idea what it meant.
“Yes.”
“All right, then,” I said, and then excused myself to go and put on a change of clothes. I was thankful that Sar’vana had either not noticed or just not cared about how wrinkled my current apparel was, or how it was the same thing that I’d worn the previous day. I hurried to my room and dressed, and then, once I was presentable, re-joined Sar’vana who had still been admiring my collection. With renewed excitement, she took me by the hand and led me through the residential sector at a brisk pace. Her eagerness reminded me of how we used to tear through the city corridors as children playing “space pirates,” causing a ruckus wherever we went. I couldn’t help laughing at her enthusiasm, and she laughed with me. And it was as if our laughter echoed in those child voices from long ago. At the same time, I was relieved that most of the city’s population was still at work, leaving the corridors nearly empty, with no stares or condescending looks in regards to our closeness. But there was also shame at that relief, and my emotions fought a grand stalemate as Sar’vana practically danced to the elevator that led to the arboretum.
“You’re in a good mood,” I said, once the door opened to the dampness and green scents of the forests and flowers.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Sar’vana said, stepping out onto the path. “I’m back on Zynj with the best human I’ve ever known.”
I felt my cheeks redden with that compliment. “Oh, come on, I’m sure you’ve met better humans than me.”
“My people have a saying,” Sar’vana said. “‘A true friend ascends higher than the famous.’ You’re my friend, Jules. And in my eyes, you’re better than even the nicest humans I’ve met. I never stayed long enough on the other worlds to truly make any close relationships …” She paused and pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Oh, wait. There was this one human. Alexa was her name, I think. I met her on Siberna.”
“Alexa?” I said, my curiosity piqued a bit more than I thought it would be. The Alexa? Dragon Lady Alexa?”
“Well, the pit crew called her the ‘Dragon Bitch,’ actually.” Sar’vana snorted a tiny giggle. “And I guess she was, after a fashion. But they never said it to her face. And she was rather sweet to me, in her own way. That being said, I think she rubbed off on me a little. You saw a bit of it when you gave me this.” Her fingers went to the jewel that hung from her necklace.
So much for asking her about what Alexa was like, I thought. “So she’s the mischievous, aggressive type? It kinda figures, with her tactics in the arena.”
“I saw her in action at the tournaments,” Sar’vana said, mirroring my keen interest and excitement. “She’s downright brutal. But she’s got talent. Made it to the semifinals last season without breaking a sweat.”
I grinned vaguely. Steel Dragon wasn’t exactly my favorite Gestalt, and I was not a huge fan of the pilot, but I was forced to agree, albeit grudgingly, with Sar’vana. “You know, my friend Chester likes her too. But I think it’s more for the … ah … aesthetics of the pilot, than for any talent.”
“Typical human males,” Sar’vana said and shook her head. Her grin was rueful, her laughter soft, but more to herself, I believed, than me. “I doubt he’d like her that much, though.”
“Oh?” I was puzzled by her observation, as she almost certainly didn’t know Chester from Adam. “Why do you say that?”
Sar’vana made a curious half-smile. “Let’s just say that she wouldn’t meet the specifications that most Zynj humans have for … shall we say, species.”
I wanted to protest, but faced with the hypocrisy of what I would say, the words died on my lips. My people were almost irrationally fixated on “genetic purity,” but looking at our history, few could blame us. Since the Felyans saved us from certain death from our own planet’s ravaged environment after the Imperium Wars, Zynj adopted its current sterilization policy not only to prevent overpopulation in the limited space of our cities, but also to protect us from giving birth to horrendous mutations. Felyan medical techniques cleaned up the residual genetic damage from the radiation, but the threat of such things loomed over us for a long time after the war, leaving what I guessed was a permanent scar on our collective psyche. Couple that with plain old human paranoia, and you had a recipe for some of the most provincial attitudes about race since the Dark Ages. It was obvious that Alexa was a mutant of some kind, unless human freaks with scales and sharp teeth were now the norm in the Colonies.
“Maybe so,” I said. “But she is a girl, and Chester’s not what you’d call picky.”
“Most likely, he doesn’t need to be,” Sar’vana said, pausing to watch a hawk fly high above in the massive cavern, but safely below the heat of the sun lamps. “Is he fixed?”
“Yeah,” I said, understanding the point she was trying to make. “So he’s got nothing holding him back. They get to ‘play around’ all they want.”
“You talk as if they’re the lucky ones.”
For the first time, I saw Sar’vana frown.
“That’s not what I mean,” I said quickly. “I never cared either way.”
“You don’t want a family someday?” Sar’vana asked, and I shuddered with the déjà vu her question has produced. I was not disturbed by it, however, only saddened.
“I wouldn’t mind it,” I said, reassuring myself as well as her, “but I’ve never found anyone I thought was mother material. Most girls I’ve known have only been interested in me for a cheap lay. I doubt they’d want to have my kids.”
“Oh, I think you give them too little credit,” Sar’vana said with almost motherly confidence, “as well as yourself.”
“Well, I need to make my decision quickly,” I said. “I don’t have much time left. I’m twenty-one, and that’s the age people expect someone like me to find an unfixed girl to settle down with and start making babies.”
“It’s a sad day when such a beautiful thing as childbirth gets reduced to a civic duty,” Sar’vana said. I too, felt the sting of the truth in her words, but knew that there was nothing I would ever be able to do about it. Besides, it wasn’t that I exactly hated the status quo. It made sense, after all. T
hose like me were expected to reproduce, and thus keep the population of the colony in balance. Thanks to the Felyan benefit of near-perfect contraceptives, we were allowed to “play around” the same as any of the unfixed, until my age, when it was expected that we would settle down and raise a family.
“We do love our children and care for them,” I said, and I knew this was, at least, true.
“Yes, but I lived here on Zynj long enough, and learned enough about it from my tutors to know that even the unsterilized would rather mate indiscriminately with no consequences,” Sar’vana countered. “Even those who have settled down rarely stay for a lifetime with their mates. What you have that substitutes for marriages never lasts long. Your parents are still together, right?”
I nodded.
“It’s a rarity, you know.”
“Yes,” I said somberly. “I know.”
Sar’vana, after a long silence that bordered on awkward, heaved a long sigh. “I’m sorry,” she said with genuine contrition. “I didn’t mean to let the conversation get so heavy. We ought to focus on happier things.”
I smiled a little, very much desiring a change of subject as well.
“You know, Siberna’s a little bit like Zynj in most places,” she said. “A great deal of nothing except rocks and sand as far as you can see. But at least you can breathe the atmosphere there. You know, I’ll bet that if they could find a way to hold the Gestalt competitions here, it would be much more challenging than Siberna could ever make them.”
“If by ‘challenging,’ you mean ‘deadlier,’ then, yes,” I said.
“What is the saying humans use?” Sar’vana said, “‘No guts, no glory’?”
I shrugged in concession. “Well, you’re right about that.”
“The challenge would certainly be exciting, wouldn’t it?” Sar’vana pantomimed boxing the trunk of a nearby oak, much to my amusement.
“And the losers get their Gestalts scrapped by the best in the business.” My remark evoked a laugh from us both. “I gather you liked it on Siberna?”
“It was most likely one of my favorite among the human worlds,” Sar’vana said. “Perhaps it was the pit town at Siberna Prime that made it so interesting. For humans, you can find just about any mechanical part you want there. The Gestalts are so huge, and there are so many merchants around, the entire place is like a small city inside the city itself.”
Sar’vana had a captive audience in me as we slowly made our way through the arboretum’s mile and a half long path, practically alone with nothing but each other. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way. She spoke more about Siberna: its luxurious coastal cities, and rustic interior mining towns, and then the near-suicidal harvesters of dilkin silk on Sepra, braving the mutants of its dense wilds. She described the magnificent dragons of Tantagel IX, and the vast orbital garrison above the otherwise bucolic world of Halo Meridian. I had become a child again, dreaming of one day seeing those other worlds that humanity had emigrated to from Earth, so long ago. I did not care that those dreams were in vain; I merely let my mind wander with Sar’vana’s words, and enjoyed her presence, all cares of who would notice our entwined hands all but a distant memory.
“It’s too bad that I’ll only have a month here,” she said. And that phrase violently and abruptly shook me from my dream-like state.
We were beside the waterfall, and I’d barely heard her over its roar. But I was almost certain that I picked up that bit of information. Quickly, I brought her some distance away, to the base of a small hill between the waterfall and ourselves, where it was quieter. “Did you just say you’ll be here only for a month?” I asked, still not quite believing.
Sar’vana nodded. “I’m afraid so, Jules. We’re only here to perform maintenance on the systems already installed, and a few minor upgrades. That takes a much shorter time than full installation.”
Her words opened a trap door beneath the floor of my happiness. I shut my eyes as the pain of her news enfolded me like a heating blanket on an already stiflingly hot day.
“No … no, you can’t mean that, Vani,” I said, suddenly feeling as if I were drowning. I was desperate to have her say that she was joking, that her presence was something permanent. But in my deepest heart, I supposed I knew all along that her stay would not be. Among the Colonies, Felyans were mostly an itinerant people, like the Gypsies of old Earth, but with a homeland, and for the most part, respected and even feared, rather than reviled. Why would Sar’vana or her father’s crew be any different? Still it didn’t stop me from pleading with her. “Please … It can’t be true, can it?”
“I’m sorry, Jules,” Sar’vana said, Her eyes avoided meeting mine, and she seemed to be holding back a great deal more emotion that she was letting on. “I should’ve told you sooner. And I wish it weren’t true. But we were never going to be here permanently.”
“But I had several years with you the last time!”
“But we don’t have years now,” Sar’vana said, her voice momentarily catching in her throat. “It’s just not possible.”
“Vani…” I rested my hands on her shoulders as I swayed, fighting against tears. “Only a month? And then who knows when I’ll see you again, if ever?”
Sar’vana was silent at this. She had been eyeing the floor as she broke the news to me, the same as when we were children, back when she hit me with the news of her leaving. Even then, I was old enough to know how isolated Zynj was. The distance and the uncertainty of communication with the Felyan government made long-term communication lines between planets and Felyan ships spotty at best, nonexistent at worst. Save couriers, which were expensive, and reserved for business communiqués, there would be no way to stay reliably in touch with Sar’vana, no matter how badly I wanted it. I felt sick. And at once, I thought that I would never be happy again.
My eyes shut, and remained closed as I felt Sar’vana move closer to me, and wrap her arms around my waist. I felt her press herself against my chest ... felt her tears seep into the fabric of my shirt. I ought to have moved away from such closeness with her, but I refused to allow my cultural decorum interfere with this. This was our moment, our sadness, and we shared it together.
But in our shared sadness and heartache over what was to be, I was struck by a notion so plain as for it to be almost ludicrously simple. Sar’vana was here. And now was now. She was not about to be ripped from my life for several weeks yet. Why ought we to cry now?
“You know, Vani, there’s no use crying over the inevitable,” I said. Without thinking about it, I stroked my hand through Sar’vana’s surprisingly thick falls of ebony hair. Wiping at my eyes with my free hand, I saw her violet eyes as they hesitantly focused on me. Understanding awakened, and she seemed to steel herself within against her sorrow, the same as I had.
“I guess you’re right,” she said, turning suddenly away, as if embarrassed to have shown this side of herself to me. She never cried as a child, not even when we were forced to part ways. Even on that fateful day, no tears escaped her eyes. She simply kept her haunted gaze fixed upon me the entire time her people made their procession to her father’s ship, staring at me until the hatch sealed shut, irrevocably separating us. Today was the first time I had ever seen her cry.
“I think the best we can do is make the most of the time we have together,” I said. “I can’t stop you from leaving. And let’s face it. You wouldn’t want to stay here, even if it was with me.” Gently, I brushed aside the remaining tears from her furry cheek. “But what we can do is have the best time we’ve ever had for whatever time we have left. I have nothing but the fondest memories from when we were kids. So now, we can have memories that are even better than before.”
She sniffled once, and then slowly, a smile returned to her face.
“You look better with a smile,” I said with confidence. I gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. “I hope it always takes something as simple as looking at a situation in the right way to bring one back to your face.”
4
After Sar’vana and I parted, the incomprehensible, painful burn accosted me worse than last night, erasing all misgivings I had about Keisha in the process. Not caring that the news would most likely find Chester’s ears again, I called her. To lessen the likelihood of anyone else I knew finding out, I arranged our rendezvous at a rival pleasure house in a more remote sector of the city. The change of venue was inconsequential to the desire I felt, and I drained it all in Keisha. As the night before went, only exhaustion stopped us.
“Wow, Jules!” Her Keisha’s came out in a long, very satiated drawl in the languid aftermath. I felt utterly drained, and even her voice sounded groggy and almost drunk with exhaustion. “I didn’t think you’d be up for a round two.”
I frowned at her words. Keisha was not allowing fatigue to kill her ability to speak as it had before. “So I have to ask, what brought it on? Why the sudden interest?”
It was only by good fortune that my own exhaustion had left me quite few of words. And I could not think of a good lie for this occasion, even if I could speak. Quickly, I masked my expression as I turned to face her.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, giving only the briefest and barest truth I knew. My fire had burned out, and still, I did not understand why it happened, or why I chose Keisha to sate my desire. To be honest, I was almost certain that any woman would have worked. But something constantly, irrevocably, drew me back to her. I turned towards her sleepy face and made as genuine a smile as I dared. “But I don’t see you complaining.”
“Oh, not at all,” Keisha said with a giggle that reminded me of Sar’vana. That recollection re-ignited the fire, and I suppressed a gasp. Keisha, fortunately, did not see my momentary startled expression, as she had yawned at the very same moment. “You can call me anytime, lover!”