“It’s a very beautiful world you have here,” Frieda remarked.
Fritz bowed again. “We think so, too. It is designed to give each of us everything we need and desire with a minimum of friction. It’s too bad we can’t convince the other factions to come and live here. Then there would be no more war on Angondra.”
Frieda snorted. “That’s not likely to happen.”
Fritz smiled. “No, it isn’t.”
At exactly the moment when Frieda started to wish he would leave so she could talk to Sasha alone again, Fritz bowed to her again and walked away, back toward the wall.
“You see?” Sasha told her. “They’re exactly like us.”
“How can you be sure anybody is who they say they are?” Frieda asked. “If your mind makes everyone the way you want them to be, they could be anything in the world and you would never know. The Avitras and the Lycaon say the Aqinas can’t be trusted. They say the Aqinas fomented wars between the other factions to take advantage of them and then negotiated peace agreements to further their own interests. How can you be sure that’s not true?”
“I’m not sure it isn’t true,” Sasha replied. “I can’t say what the previous leaders of the Aqinas did or didn’t do, but like I said, the water keeps nothing hidden from any of us. You’ll see when you start meeting other Aqinas. You’ll see for yourself whether you can trust them or not, and you’ll understand that Fritz and the other Aqinas want only peace for all Angondra. That’s all any of us wants.”
Frieda shut her eyes tight, but the swirling mass of conflicting images threatened to overwhelm her even then. “I don’t think I can handle all this.”
Sasha took her by the arm. “Come here. I want to show you something.”
Frieda let Sasha lead her back across the meadow the way she came, but she didn’t bother to look around her. What was the point, if all her surroundings were just a pop-up of her own thoughts? What was the point of talking to people if the water made them exactly the way she wanted them to be?
She wasn’t watching where Sasha led her until shadows darkened out the light from above. When she looked around, she noticed the forest looming overhead. The undulating trees—or whatever they were—blocked out the light.
Frieda hesitated, but Sasha pulled her forward. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s perfectly safe.”
Frieda followed her into the shadows, and a moment later she stopped in a little clearing between the towering seaweed trunks. A perfectly round little house sat between the trees with strange colored plants surrounding the front door. A ray of sunlight shone down through the dense forest and lit up the domed roof covered in moss.
Sasha pushed the door open. “Come on in. This is my house.”
Frieda hesitated on the doorstep and squinted into the house. It was one small room with a shelf on one side made up into a bed, and a table and two chairs on the other side. When she saw no danger, Frieda stepped into the room. Light flooded down into the room from somewhere overhead, even though the roof was solid with no windows or openings.
Frieda gazed in every direction. “You....live here?”
“Well, Fritz and I do,” Sasha replied. “And we don’t really live here the way most people live in houses. Most people spend all their time in the meadow, but you can go back to your own house whenever you want to relax or sleep or do whatever you want to do.”
“My house?” Frieda asked. “I don’t have a house.”
“Every Aqinas has their own house,” Sasha told her.
“But I’m not Aqinas,” Frieda pointed out.
“You are now,” Sasha replied. “The moment you arrived here, the water gave you a house of your own. Since you’re human like I am, it will probably be a lot like this one. Anyway, you can go there to rest whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed. Maybe you’d like to go there now.”
“Maybe I would,” Frieda murmured. “Where is it?”
“Only you can find that out,” Sasha replied.
Frieda stared at her. “Why can’t you take me there the same way you brought me here? Is it some kind of secret?”
“It isn’t secret,” Sasha replied. “But it’s yours. Your mind creates it, so only you can find it.”
“How do I do that?” she asked.
“You go back to the meadow,” Sasha replied. “Then you think about going home to your own house, and then you go there. It works the same as calling one of the people to come and talk to you, only the other way around. It’s your house, so only you can go there, unless you want to take someone there.”
“What if I wanted to take you there?” Frieda asked.
Sasha smiled. “I’ll go with you, if you want me to. That way, you’ll be sure you really get there, and you’ll know how to get there in the future. Would you like that?”
Frieda blushed and nodded down at the floor.
Sasha took her hand again. “Come on.”
They returned to the meadow, and when they got back to the same spot in the middle of it, Sasha let go of her hand. “Now set your mind to take you to your own house.”
Frieda looked around. “How am I supposed to do that when I don’t know where it is?”
“Your mind will make it where your mind says it is,” Sasha replied. “Now stop talking and think.”
Sasha laid her hands on Frieda’s shoulders and turned her around in a half-circle, so Frieda stood with her back to her. Frieda took a deep breath and wondered. She would never have found Sasha’s house if Sasha hadn’t led her to it. She could never find any other Aqinas house if their owners didn’t show her where they were. Where in this strange world was her own house?
She scanned the surroundings with her mind. It wasn’t toward the wall where all those people hung around. Nothing else differentiated the landscape but meadow and forest.
Sasha’s voice murmured in her ear from behind. “Now, start walking.”
Frieda didn’t know which way to walk, but her legs moved of their own accord. They swished through the grass, going nowhere. She shut her mind off from everything else, the same way she did when she followed Sasha to her house.
The sky darkened with shadow again, and she found herself at the edge of the woods, standing in front of a different house. This one wasn’t set in a clearing between the trees, though. It sat in the meadow’s waving grass with the trees behind it. Other plants decorated the doorstep, and more colored plants brightened the windows.
Sasha patted her on the shoulder. “I knew you could do it.”
Frieda stepped inside, but the whole scene appeared surreal and hazy to her. This couldn’t really be her own house. Inside, though, something changed in her mind. A deep sensation of rightness and comfort welled up inside her. She would have sat down in the chair at the table if Sasha hadn’t been standing there, but this was, really and truly, her own house. She could live here and never feel out of place.
Sasha moved toward the door. “You’ll be all right now. You can go out to the meadow again whenever you want to, and if you want to talk to me, all you have to do is think about me and I’ll come.”
Frieda whirled around. “Wait a minute. Not so fast.”
“What is it now?” Sasha asked.
“I still have some questions for you,” Frieda replied.
“Well, fire away,” Sasha told her.
Frieda shifted from one foot to the other. “I don’t like the idea of bringing someone to me against their will. What if they don’t want to come when I call them?”
Sasha turned toward her with a sigh. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re not bringing anyone against their will. It only looks like they come to you because the water forms a seamless connection between your mind and your body and your spirit and theirs. The other person never leaves their own meadow. To them, it looks like you came to them.”
Frieda blinked. “It does? So you’re in your own meadow right now?”
Sasha laughed “Of cours
e I am. Think about it. Do you know anything about bees on Earth?”
“Bees?” Frieda repeated. “You mean like honey bees?”
“Exactly,” Sasha replied. “In their hives, they communicate through the smell of their pheromones. Their chemical signature tells all the other bees in the hive exactly what they ate that day, where they’re going, what they’re doing, even how old they are and how healthy they are. The smell, the temperature, the chemical composition of the wax, even the vibration of their wings against the hive box communicates to every bee in the hive exactly what the rest of the hive is doing. It creates one homogeneous chemical solution.”
“Are you telling me the Aqinas are the same?” Frieda asked.
“They are the same,” Sasha replied, “except it’s the water that creates the homogeneous solution. The chemical action of your body, even the electrical signals in your nervous system, are transmitted through the water to every other Aqinas. That’s how they communicate with each other, through the water. We aren’t standing here in a house talking to each other. That wouldn’t be possible in the middle of the ocean. The water creates the illusion we’re doing that because our minds can relate to that frame of reference most easily.”
Frieda really did sink into her chair then. “It’s awfully complicated.”
“Don’t make it any more complicated for yourself than you have to,” Sasha replied. “We’re standing here talking to each other, and that’s as real as anything. I’m not an illusion. I’m a real person, and I’m showing you around your new home. That’s real.”
“What else is real?” Frieda asked. “How can you tell where real ends and fantasy begins?”
“It’s all real,” Sasha replied. “Even the parts you’re calling fantasy are real. You can have the same relationships with people that you had on land. You can make a home for yourself here the same way you did on land. All the parts of life that make it worth living are here. It’s only the window dressing that’s different, and it isn’t even different, either. It’s the same as your life on land. It’s just different than it would be if the water didn’t make it the same.”
Frieda closed her eyes again, and her voice croaked out in a hoarse whisper. “Stop.”
Sasha took her hand once more. “Let’s go back to the meadow. Everything makes a lot more sense there.”
Frieda got to her feet. “What do you eat?”
Sasha shot her a glance over her shoulder. “What?”
“What do you eat?” Frieda repeated. “Do you hunt shellfish or something?”
Sasha’s face brightened. “The algae that moves oxygen into our blood also moves microscopic nutrients into our bodies so we don’t have to eat. But you can eat some of this stuff if you want to, if it makes you feel better.”
She waved her hand toward the table. A wooden tray Frieda hadn’t noticed before sat on the table, and a dozen different objects covered it. Some looked like moss. Others looked something like crabs. Still others looked like bright purple apples. “What is this stuff?”
“It’s food,” Sasha replied. “It’s Aqinas food, but you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to. You’re not really hungry, are you?”
Frieda thought about it. “No, I’m not, now that you mention it.”
“You won’t get hungry, or thirsty, or tired, except maybe mentally tired,” Sasha told her. “The algae and the water take care of all our bodily needs so we can live in this world indefinitely. The only thing they can’t provide is the company of other people. We have to do that for ourselves, but this world works remarkably well for that.”
Sasha led her back to the meadow. Frieda turned a complete circle and took in the whole view in the light of her new understanding. “Now what?”
Sasha took a step backwards. “I’ll go now. You know everything you need to know, and if you need me for anything, you know how to find me.” She turned and started walking back toward the wall. “I’ll see you later.”
Chapter 2
Frieda stood in the center of the meadow—her meadow—for a long time. It looked different now that Sasha had explained to her what everything really was. What she originally thought was the sky looked exactly like the surface of water seen from underneath, with the sun refracting through the waves in a myriad of shimmering patterns. The dark shapes outlined against the brightness looked like strange sea creatures drifting across the upper layer of water. The trees really did resemble giant seaweed waving in the current.
Sasha never explained about the wall, and Frieda couldn’t stop her mind from gravitating toward the people near it. They would be like Fritz and Sasha and her—human, at least in appearance and speech and behavior.
After all, what more was there, when it came to interacting with people? She had more in common with these Aqinas than she had with the Lycaon, with their pointed ears and sharp teeth, and the Avitras, with their bright feathers and birdlike eyes. Sasha was right about that part. When it came to relating to people, to making connections with them and enjoying their company, she could find everything she needed here as easily as anywhere else.
Still, she couldn’t get her mind to accept the reality that this place was under the sea, that she was underwater right now, that some black algae was allowing her to breathe. The warm sun on the brittle summer grass, the perfume of the wildflowers, and the shadows of the trees moving across the ground—it all seemed so like Earth. She was home here. She was home after almost a year on this strange planet.
Maybe that’s why she never made a home for herself with the Lycaon or the Avitras. They were too alien. The Earthlike familiarity of the planet couldn’t hide the alien nature of the people. She couldn’t overcome her own prejudice against them.
She wouldn’t have that problem here. Fritz didn’t look alien at all. He was tall and handsome and charming. No wonder Sasha chose him as her mate. Frieda’s eyes gravitated toward the wall again, but even before she had time to wonder if there were any other Aqinas men like Fritz over there, someone split off from the group and came toward her.
Frieda’s heartbeat quickened. What would he be like? Would he be tall and handsome and charming like Fritz? Why did she think that when she hadn’t even wanted to bring a man toward her? She only wondered.
He brushed his hand over the grass the same way she did when she first met Sasha. The motion put her at ease. She wasn’t the only one who felt that comfortable familiarity with this place. He stopped in front of her, and Frieda stared at him. He couldn’t be older than Fritz, but his eyes radiated a calm born of maturity and experience. Fritz struck her as young and untried. This man had seen it all, even though he couldn’t have been much older than Frieda herself. He stood still and regarded her with his mellow brown eyes while she scanned him up and down.
Her curiosity got the better of her. “Do all Aqinas wear their hair in those ropes down the back of your heads?”
He didn’t smile. “Yes. The algae embeds in our hair and keeps it tied like this so it can access every part of our skin. This way, it has maximum surface area to transmit oxygen into our blood.”
“Why does it do that?” she asked. “How did you adapt to get the algae to colonize your skin?”
“It’s a symbiotic relationship,” he replied. “The algae are small plants. They consume the carbon dioxide we produce, and they get rid of their waste oxygen by diffusing it into our blood stream. This way, we don’t have to breathe at all.”
Frieda blushed. “I’m sorry. I should have introduced myself to you first. I’m Frieda. I apologize for being rude.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” he replied. “You just got here. It’s natural you have questions about us.”
She paused. “So what’s your name?”
He didn’t close his eyes and bow the way Fritz did. He stared straight into her eyes, and yet his gaze didn’t disconcert her the way she expected it to. She stared back into his eyes with frank acceptance.
&nbs
p; “My name is Deek,” he replied.
“Deek!” she repeated. “That’s an interesting name. Do all the Aqinas have one-syllable names?”
He studied her. “I really don’t know. I don’t know all the Aqinas.”
His manner fascinated her. He couldn’t have been more different from Fritz if he’d been a different species. “How many Aqinas do you know?”
“I know my family and my friends,” he replied. “And I know all Fritz’s family, and a few other families connected with them.”
Frieda frowned. “Fritz’s family is the leaders of the Aqinas. You must be talking about families with some political connection. Are they the ones that run this faction?”
He put his head on one side and nodded. “I understand. You came from the factions, so naturally you think we behave the same way, but we don’t have a faction. We don’t have families with political connection. No one runs the Aqinas.”
“Then who makes decisions concerning what you’ll do and how you’ll run your lives?” she asked. “Who’s in charge of that?”
“No one makes decisions concerning what you’ll do and how you’ll run your life except you,” he replied. “Some of the families make decisions as groups, but no one tells anybody else what to do or how to do it. We don’t function that way.”
Frieda thought that over. “Tell me more about the connection the water makes between your minds. Sasha said you know everything everybody else is thinking and feeling at all times because the water makes them one homogeneous chemical solution.”
“That’s one way of describing it,” he replied. “For example, right now I can see shadows of the life you had when you were on land. I can see the factions where you lived and the men who led them. I can understand why you think the Aqinas might be the same way. I would have no frame of reference for that if the water didn’t make it clear to me.”
Frieda blinked. “Are you saying you’re reading my mind right now?”
“You can do the same thing if you want to,” he replied. “You can see images of my life among the Aqinas, and you can understand better how we live.”
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