by Greg Keyes
The words stopped coming, replaced by a wheezy sort of sound, and Alvar realized that the man was singing. He could not pick out the words, and the tune was either unknown to him or so badly rendered that he didn’t recognize it.
“Anyway,” the man said, after the song trailed off and died. “Anyway, I had to sleep, didn’t I? And one day I would die. That was when I decided I wouldn’t die, not for a long time. A Vilmir recruiter had come to see me, months before. I found her and signed on. How else could a poor boy buy immortality?”
You weren’t as poor as me, thought Alvar. I could never have afforded a hunting trip in Argentina.
“I’ve done my time, Parrot-Island-Man. It’s over for me.”
“Right,” said Alvar. “Except that you’re in jail. Your cover is gone, and now you’ve probably destroyed mine. Good luck getting your contract honored; you’ll never see Earth again.”
Jimmie chuckled dryly. “You don’t know much. Less than them, even. They know I’m a traitor to the pueblos, but they don’t understand how deep it goes. I work for the people down in Salt, that’s all they know. I guess that makes me a traitor twice over, eh?”
“I guess it does,” Alvar sighed.
“Hey, boy. Is your friend awake? The soldier?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Keep at her. Tell her to be ready.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just tell her to be ready. Soon.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Night stillness had settled onto the pueblo, and Sand sat tracing her finger across her mother’s table. Tuchvala was in the bathroom; Sand had showed her how to use the shower, and the sheer delight on her face had been a wonder to behold.
Sand recognized that her attitude towards Tuchvala was changing. The day before, she had been a mere symbol, fear and grief. Now—in one short day—her presence had become somehow comforting. Before, Tuchvala had been the stolen form of her mother, the threat. Now the threat hovered above the sky in a form much more alien than Tuchvala. Whatever the woman said, she was not—in a sense, never had been—whatever alien intelligence had created her. And in the brief time Sand had known her, something had taken shape between them. Sand did not know what it was, but it was quite different from the shape of her love for Pela. The angles were all different. But it was something.
Tuchvala—whose very name summarized the mystery of life and creation—was enigma and familiarity. Her thoughts seemed tantalizingly close, sometimes, but only when she spoke in the most literal manner was she entirely comprehensible. Thoughts and feelings lurked behind her brown eyes, which, as a new-born, Tuchvala had no way of expressing. And yet there was an elegance to her thought that Sand had begun to sense and appreciate.
The hushed sound of the shower ceased, and Sand was sure she heard a disappointed gasp. Water was at a premium in the pueblos, and no Household would allow the shower to stay on for long, though the water was cleaned and recirculated. Sand turned her head curiously when the bathroom door sighed open.
Tuchvala moved like a toddler, in a way, acutely aware of her body, seemingly constantly amazed by it. The shower had dried her off, as Sand had instructed it to, though her hair was still damp—a dark, ropey mass that hung to nearly her waist.
She was so lovely Sand could have wept. She had seen Pela unclothed often enough, and her thick body had always seemed host to a secret kind of beauty. Here was the secret revealed. Seeing Pela, Sand always saw the scars. The white, blistery stretch marks the marked Sand’s own arrival; the transient bruises, the place where Jimmie had burned her with a sterilizer once. The thickening of early middle age, the prominent varicose veins. And yet, seeing her young, Sand realized how little difference there really was. It was only that when she was alive, her mother’s little faults had masked her beauty. Sand’s image of Pela was an image of hurt, rather than health—and that had been Sand’s own fault.
But Tuchvala was not her mother. Tuchvala was a newborn. Sand appraised her, and thought that she had never seen a more beautiful woman. And then Tuchvala smiled, and it was if the sun had risen.
“The shower was very nice. I never imagined that flesh was so wonderful.”
She carefully sat on one of the thicker rugs, leaned forward to stroke her own calves.
“I wondered if this body could feel more than need and pain. What … why is it that … it feels like this? Pain I can understand, because it warns you when something is wrong.”
“I don’t know.”
Watching Tuchvala stroke herself Sand grinned idly. What might it be like, to experience sensation for the first time as an adult? To feel hot water against your tired skin for the first time, to feel the hard pleasure of a good massage, the first tentative touch of a lover’s tongue?
A hot flush of embarrassment reddened Sand’s face. Tuchvala, blissfully unaware of any thoughts she might be arousing, was still exploring the feel of her fingers brushed against her skin. She had moved from her legs to her belly, tracing up across one breast. Sand rose quickly, crossed to the wardrobe, and selected a nightshirt. Tuchvala was watching her when she turned back around.
“You might want to put this on, Tuchvala,” she said, briskly. “The household tends to let things get cool in here at night.”
Tuchvala nodded, still smiling, and observing Sand’s own garment, slipped the one-piece cotton shirt over her head. It hesitated briefly on her breasts and then dropped on down as she stood up.
“Thank you for showing me the shower, Sand.”
Sand nodded. What had come over her? She was no prude.
“Come here, Tuchvala. I’ll show you something else.”
Sand indicated for Tuchvala to sit in front of her. She did so, and Sand sank down behind her, crosslegged. She reached out and laid her fingers across Tuchvala’s shoulders.
“This is called a backrub,” she said, beginning to knead the stiff muscles of Tuchvala’s shoulders. The other woman gave a little involuntary gasp.
Pela, Sand reflected, had liked backrubs too.
Midnight was approaching when the cube pinged for Sand’s attention. It startled her awake, and for the second time in two days, she awoke to find herself nested against Tuchvala. She had been giving her a massage, she remembered, and after finishing, Tuchvala leaned back against her. Sand had only closed her eyes for a moment. …
She gently pushed Tuchvala forward, and the woman woke with a start, then smiled uncertainly. Sand strode muzzily across the room, shaking her head to clear out the fog.
Yuyahoeva was on the cube.
“Sand. We’ve found the Kachina. Tuchvala’s sisters. This may be the best time for her to talk to them.”
Yuyahoeva looked tired, and Sand wondered if he would survive this ordeal, ancient as he was. If any of them would.
“Okay. I’ll have her there soon.”
“You have about an hour while we get the laser aligned.”
Sand’s clothes were all too small for Tuchvala, but she hesitated before giving her one of Pela’s outfits. She had distanced Tuchvala from Pela well enough to deal with her—even enough to like her a little. She feared a return of her uncertainty, of resentment. Still, she had to dress her guest, and not in the grotesque parody of clothing that she had worn up until then. She finally settled on something that she had only seen her mother wear once; Jimmie had bought it for her while seeking forgiveness, but Pela had never liked it very much. It was a traditionally-cut skirt, suitable for ceremonial garb, but it had gaudy borders of corn tassels stitched along each seam, and it was a deep, almost black, green. The matching cotton blouse was sleeveless and buttonless, and not traditional at all, patterned with black, red, and green diamonds. The green matched her skirt.
On Pela, the outfit had looked unnatural. On Tuchvala it had a certain appeal.
Sand stripped out of her own nightshirt—she had tr
aded it for her worn jumper before Tuchvala’s shower—and chose a pollen-yellow cotton body suit. Over that, a slightly unconventional pleated skirt and high-collared blouse, both black.
She combed out her hair and set it up in her maiden’s coils, as Tuchvala watched curiously. A thought struck Sand, and she grinned wryly.
Tuchvala was a maiden; more so than Sand. Wielding the brush, she turned towards her companion.
When she was done, Sand mirrored one of the walls so that they could see themselves together. She whistled.
“Damn, Tuchvala. Two virgins all dressed up. We look pretty good together.”
A silly remark, but Tuchvala smiled. And it was a more pleasant thing to keep in ones head when the world might be about to end. Sand’s smile faded, and she ushered Tuchvala out the door.
The observatory was walking distance, and they reached it in under half an hour. It was reared up on a spit of mottled grey stone; a few lights burned down below, hinting at the town without revealing it. Above them, the stars were cold ice.
The women shed the faint outdoor chill as they entered the observatory. It was dark, but climate controlled. Sand had only been here once, though she had been to the observatory in Paso on the coast before. The telescopes in Paso were without peer, and the station could access the sky Kachina as well. The mesa observatory seemed very poor to a younger Sand. The gravity telescope was old and bulky, and,—most embarrassing of all—there was an ancient optical scope, jutting out toward the stars like some huge penis.
Now, suddenly, she saw the optical scope in perspective. If it broke now, they could fix it with the tools and parts they had on the mesa. If the gravity scope stopped working, they would have to beg Hoku for parts. And right now, they seemed to be at war with the lowlanders.
A central cube was illumined with a faint light; beyond and through it, the light limned Yuyahoeva’s face, so that it appeared his features hovered, godlike, behind the toy ship. Sand approached, felt her breath quicken. Here it was.
The ship resembled a ceremonial hourglass. It was nearly featureless. Sand wasn’t sure what she expected, but it must have been something more impressive, because she felt a little let down.
“It’s because you can’t see its size like this,” said Yuyahoeva, correctly reading her reaction.
“That’s me,” Tuchvala whispered, shuffling forward until her hand touched the cube.
“It is? How can you tell?”
Tuchvala frowned for a moment. “Oh. I can’t. It could be one of my sisters. But we were all essentially one, to start with. I still … how can I tell?”
“You must have been able to tell your sisters apart before.”
“Yes, but by their thoughts. Little differences at first, big ones later.”
“How will you distinguish them now?”
Tuchvala looked at her curiously. “It doesn’t matter, Sand. Whichever I talk too, they will all hear me.”
“You should do it, then,” Yuyahoeva said.
Tuchvala nodded. You have a laser communicator here?”
“Yes,” the old man sighed. “We have it aimed with the optical scope.”
Tuchvala strode towards the panel where a young man named Nash – Sand’s grandaunt’s nephew’s boy—was carefully adjusting the attitude of the telescope.
“I need to send a simple series of binary messages,” Tuchvala told them. “They will unlock a communications link that we froze up many years ago. Otherwise, they will neither recognize me nor speak to me.”
“Tell us the binary pattern,” Nash said, his voice quivering slightly, so that Sand could not help smiling a bit.
“I will use the consonant “t” to indicate the absence of a pulse and the vowel “o” to indicate the presence.”
“Go,” whispered the young man.
“Totot’toooto. …” Sand began, and droned on for several moments, a look of deep concentration on her face. When she was done, she wrinkled her nose prettily.
“I think that’s right. Human brains aren’t very good at this sort of thing.”
“No,” Sand agreed.
“What happens if the signal isn’t right?” Yuyahoeva asked worriedly.
“Nothing. We just won’t get a response.”
Nash checked the recording of Tuchvala’s code, had the computer read it back to her in little flashes of light. When he was done, she nodded.
“I’ll send it, then,” Nash said, and spoke softly to the computer.
For a moment, Sand did not understand what had changed, but Yuyahoeva gasped, and suddenly she understood. The image of the starship in the cube was gone; the cube itself was opaque.
“What? What?” demanded Yuyahoeva. Nash frantically mouthed commands, then switched to the manual touch-board. Finally he looked up at them, fear shining brightly through his young features.
“It’s dead,” he groaned. “I don’t know how, or why—but the computer has shut down.”
“Shut down.” Yuyahoeva tottered to a bench and sat unsteadily. Sand watched in astonishment. The computer was the oldest spirit of them all—it had accompanied people to the Fifth World, and though it had been changed and modified many times since, it had always been their faithful friend.
Yuyahoeva’s face was hardening.
“Jimmie,” he snarled.
Sand sneezed, and an instant later, Tuchvala did too.
Fifty Kilometers away, a clear note sounded from within Hoku’s Bluehawk. He turned a grim smile towards Homikniwa.
“Here we go,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The night had begun to frighten me, by then. I was used to knowing where I was going, to peeling through layers of photons, neutrinos, through the very oscillating structure of space itself. I was used to being able to see.
Now I couldn’t see anything, and I was denied what I most needed; myself. As much as I wished to help Sand and her people, I had additional motives for wanting to make the laser link with my sisters. I wanted to know who I was now. I feared vanishing—becoming hot water streaming on my back, Sand’s fingers digging into my tight shoulders, the swirling vertigo of fatigue and sleep. I was becoming a series of events, a recording of moments. Losing the timeless clarity of real thought. I could feel that slipping away, more surly than ever I felt the mere erosion of my capacities as time decayed my hardware. And the pace was so much quicker, in this body. Images flashed and receded in my brain, masquerading as rational thought.
No wonder Sand’s people valued dreams. Dreams were all they had.
The word for what I did then is sneeze. Sand taught it to me and sneezed again herself.
“Must be something in the air,” she told me. I wasn’t sure what she meant.
Whatever had gone wrong, they seemed to blame it on Sand’s father—on the man who had sent me away from him, back in the jail. I understand the consternation I cause, wearing this form.
But it was my form now.
I stumbled along wherever we were going, holding Sand’s hand, afraid.
“What the fuck?” Teng groaned.
“Teng! Teng! It’s me, Alvar!” Alvar crowded as close as he could to the wall. The lights in the jail cut off for a second time and then came back up, much dimmer.
“I know. I’ve been awake for awhile, Alvar. Long enough to hear you make a fool of yourself. Again.”
“Hey, soldier-woman!” It was Jimmie, a peculiar ring in his voice.
“I’ve heard your whining shit too, spy. What do you want?”
“You hear me say it was time to be ready?”
“I’m always as ready as I can be.”
“You better be real ready, now. I can help you, but you have to help me. You can’t let them have me.”
“Who?”
“Any of them. You have to take me off of this stinking planet.”<
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Teng sighed. “It’s in your fucking contract, okay? That was the plan all along.”
“Plans can be changed, especially by soldiers. They have a bad habit of cutting plans off at the quick.”
Alvar interrupted, his anger surprising even to him.
“What the fuck are you two talking about? Jesus, I still don’t know what’s going on. I’m sick of this shit. Teng, you talk to me. What’s happening here?”
He heard Teng snort, but it was the old man who answered him.
“She doesn’t know, you idiot. She may have guessed, though. There’s about to be a full-blown war on this mesa. That should give us time to get away. If we’re smart.”
“War?”
“He must have shut down the computer somehow, Alvar,” Teng interjected. “He probably knew he was going to get arrested.”
“So. …”
“The defenses are down. Those assholes from the coast will be coming up here to get the alien, won’t they, spy?”
“They still pick you killers smart.”
“But not spies, it seems,” Alvar sneered. “We’re still in jail, or hadn’t you noticed?”
“Details,” hissed the old man, and a chill raced up Alvar’s spine.
Alvar sneezed.
The old man chuckled. “There we go,” he said. “Right on time.”
Alvar meant to ask what the hell Jimmie meant by that, but he sneezed again, and then the door of the jail sighed open. Six people walked in: two men armed with some kind of black pistols, the old man from the mesa-top, a younger man he did not recognize, the woman Sand, and the alien, if alien she was.