Bright Shards

by Meg Pechenick

  She took my role as cultural emissary seriously too. At her instigation I began offering a weekly lesson on colloquial English. This event, held in the lounge during the senek hour, was surprisingly popular. My crewmates’ English, while generally superb, tended toward the formal. Apparently that fact had struck several of them while listening to my conversations with Kylie on Arkhati.

  “I would have been fine if you’d just used a little less slang,” Khiva said critically, which made me laugh.

  “I will if you will,” I told her.

  The nature of the class was directly dependent on who was in attendance on a given night. Daskar was interested in idioms, Zey liked to analyze sitcom dialogue, and Vethna’s sole purpose seemed to be to expand his repertoire of English profanity. On one memorable night, the lesson was just concluding when Sohra asked, “Why do you have so many metaphors about sex?”

  “Probably because they’re all trying to sleep with each other all the time,” Ziral said.

  “Not all the time,” I protested.

  “Compared to us,” Ziral said with inarguable logic.

  Zey asked, “Do you have a word for a human who wants to sleep with a Vardeshi?”

  I tried to dodge the question. “Well, a human who’s weirdly obsessed with the Vardeshi is called a Vaku.”

  He waved his hand. “We know that one already. I mean a word for a human who wants to . . .” He frowned, obviously trying to dredge up one of the slang words for sex we’d catalogued on previous nights.

  I cut him off before he could come up with anything. “I know what you mean. And yes, we have a word for it. It’s just not that flattering. It’s called ice-fishing. Because of your cooler body temperatures. And because we don’t read your facial expressions very well, so we think of you as emotionally cold. Oh, and before you ask, we don’t have a word for a human who actually sleeps with your people yet, because it’s only happened once. That we know of, anyway.”

  “Eyvri’s embarrassed,” Khiva said gleefully. “Look, she’s the color of a kina fruit.”

  Even if I hadn’t seen kina trees laden with crimson fruit in the hydroponics bay on Arkhati, I would have known from the heat in my face how deeply I was blushing. Wishing Hathan weren’t in the room, I tried to deflect the attention from myself. “So what about you guys? Do you have a word for a Vardeshi who’s into humans?”

  They exchanged considering looks. “Not really,” Ziral said.

  “Not yet,” Zey corrected. “I bet we’ll have one soon. It’s rare, but it’s not that rare.”

  “It’s a lonely universe,” I said, wondering if Reyna would recognize her own words. Glancing her way, I thought I saw the shadow of a smile.

  Equally well attended, if less salacious in its content, was the other class Reyna suggested. This one, which I thought of as “topics in Earth studies,” consisted of a brief lecture followed by questions. My crewmates suggested the lecture topics. We had talked about food (at Ahnir’s request) and fashion (at Khiva’s) and a few other subjects before Reyna herself suggested a lecture on geography. On arriving at the lounge that night, I was startled to see the entire crew expectantly assembled.

  “Of course everyone came,” Zey said afterward, in the tone of one stating the obvious. “We have three weeks of leave on Earth coming up, and nobody has any idea where to go.”

  I immediately began an extended series on the many and varied tourist destinations of Earth. It was surprising and fascinating to see which places caught my crewmates’ interest. I was reasonably sure that Ziral and Ahnir would be spending their leave lying on a tropical beach somewhere, while Daskar and Sohra seemed inclined toward India. I did an hour on Japan for Saresh, and one on New York and Los Angeles for Zey. “You’re just trying to get your acting career started,” I teased him.

  “Obviously,” he agreed. “If I’m going to star in a Vardrama, I have to be—what do you call it? Discovered.”

  As I fielded my crewmates’ questions about climate and etiquette and custom, I had to admit that the role reversal was enjoyable. For once, I was dispensing knowledge rather than receiving it. I savored those conversations almost as much as I had savored the preceding discussions of the Vardeshi worlds. It helped that geography was a safe subject. I could describe the natural beauty of my home with undiluted pride. How my fellow humans would represent themselves to our visitors—how, for that matter, they were already representing themselves to the hundred Vardeshi stationed at various points around the globe—was another question, but I didn’t allow my thoughts to linger on it. It was pointless to worry about something so entirely beyond my control. I couldn't curate all of humanity for Vardeshi consumption. And if, as Reyna asserted, the alliance was going to go forward, it was probably better that they know as early as possible what they were signing on for. I hoped that they could forgive us for a little ignorance and bigotry. It didn’t seem like too much to ask. After all, I had forgiven them for Vekesh.

  It didn’t escape my notice that when my crewmates and I inventoried the changes that had taken place since the launch of the Ascendant, for the most part we were talking about Reyna. Her impact on our lives was instantly visible. For me, there were the classes and the readings and the tactful but persistent attempts to win me away from the Fleet. For the others, there were the ranshai practices and the night-duty shifts and the room inspections. Hers was the voice we heard at morning and evening briefings. As for Hathan in his new role as khavi, his touch on the reins was either remarkably light or invisible to me. I thought he must be deliberately holding back to see how Reyna integrated into the life of the ship. I watched for signs of tension between them, but saw none. If they had disagreements, they settled them in private. I had to admire their professionalism, even while I wished it were a little less airtight.

  They were constantly together. I knew it was only a function of their roles—Hathan and Vekesh had been equally inseparable—but I was ferociously jealous. I couldn’t help it, even while I knew it was absurd. I never felt more out of place or more ploddingly human than when I watched the two of them at work, his gray head and her dark one bent together over one of their flexscreens. They were so perfectly suited, those two slim upright figures, two inscrutable faces, two uninflected voices. During briefings I forced myself to stare at each of their right hands, reminding myself of the significance of the gold sigil. They were engaged. To other people. Just because they looked ideally matched to me didn’t mean they actually were.

  And what did I know about what constituted a good match among the Vardeshi, anyway? Sohra was the only one who had ever talked to me about her fiancé. The rest of them seemed to glide along in the calm certainty that someone else who had been judged tolerably compatible was out there as well, going through the round of his or her own days, looking ahead without visible anticipation to the day when they would eventually be united for life. To me it was impossibly foreign. No—the correct word was the one I had sidestepped ever since I realized how profound a hold the Vardeshi had on me. It was alien. Hathan and Reyna weren’t flirting. They weren’t falling in love. The thought probably never even crossed either of their minds. They didn’t look for perfect compatibility, as I did, in the serendipitous crossing of paths that occurred in a random universe. Their minds simply didn’t work that way.

  Mine did. And while Hathan and I weren’t flirting either, the part of me that kept tabs on whatever connection existed between us was convinced that it was slowly strengthening. I was still hesitant to call it friendship. He never sought me out, and I continued to treat him with the same bright cool impersonal courtesy I had drawn around myself like a shell when I first recognized my true feelings for him. Still, the tentative sharings of culture we had begun on Arkhati had laid the groundwork for more of the same. I gave silent thanks to Reyna for her insistence on the Earth culture lectures, as they bore unexpected fruit. During the final lecture of the travel series, Hathan expressed interest in exploring the mountain ranges of Earth. I l
ost no time in requesting electronic versions of a few different hiking guides and trail maps from home. Wary of betraying myself, I mentioned to him in an offhand manner that the documents had arrived and that he might want to look them over.

  “Let’s look at them together,” he said at once. “Without your help, they won’t mean much more to me than our star charts do to you.”

  I thought that was overstating things a little, but I wasn’t about to pass up the invitation. The evening we spent alone in the lounge, mapping out possible routes and trading backpacking stories from my college days and his Institute training, was one of the most precious of the journey for me. It was made inexpressibly sweeter by the fantasy it allowed me to entertain of our one day taking such a trip together. I knew it could only be a fantasy. I wasn’t about to invite myself along on his vacation, and despite my best efforts to subtly sway him toward spending at least some of it in my native New England, where we might plausibly run into each other, I had the distinct impression that he was leaning toward Patagonia.

  Two of the three months that separated Arkhati from Vardesh Prime passed with astonishing speed. My life on the Ascendant was full and rewarding. My novi duties were second nature now. The afternoon readings were still frustratingly difficult, but I was conscious of making steady, incremental progress under Reyna’s tutelage. I was no closer to understanding Vardeshi propulsion or navigation than I had ever been, but I had now read nearly a full chapter of the introductory Fleet textbook, and I knew a little about the first tentative forays of the Vardeshi beyond their homeworld’s atmosphere. The evening English and culture lectures were an undeniable success.

  And, always, there was Hathan. In the inevitable way of travelers sharing tight quarters, we were in constant proximity, close without being close. On a ship built for fifteen, I was never more than a few minutes away from the sound of his voice. There were briefings and officers’ dinners and ranshai practices and chance corridor passings to look forward to. And there was the knowledge of months of such encounters still ahead. And, drawing ever closer, Vardesh Prime. Already in my dreams I walked among the glass spires of Khezendri or the burnished forests of Nasthav Province. At the final evening briefing of each week, I waited impatiently for the moment when Hathan would call up the navigation chart with the blue triangle labeled “Prime” and the blinking white pinpoint marking the Ascendant’s current position. Every week, the two were fractionally closer together. I had crossed the darkness to find a new world, and I was almost there.

  As I had done once before, I allowed myself to drift into a sense of complacency. And once again I discovered the futility—or, worse, hubris—of believing that my life among the Vardeshi could ever be predictable. We were just under a month out from Vardesh Prime when it happened. The day in question began in utterly prosaic fashion. It had been Zey’s turn to brew the morning senek. Arriving just prior to the start of the briefing, I settled myself on my stool and logged into the tabletop display. Seeing no new messages worthy of note, I pulled up the agenda for the briefing and scanned it. Suvi Ekhran was listed as the first to speak. As she began her report on the night-duty rotation, I stifled a yawn. The five-thirty workouts didn’t seem to be getting any easier, and as I was scheduled to serve at officers’ dinner that night, it was going to be a very long day. Luckily, I had the next day free. Knowing I should be paying attention, I dragged my thoughts back to the present.

  “If you’re planning to trade night-duty shifts,” Reyna was saying, “it’s essential that you inform me so that the change can be listed on the official roster. In an emergency, we could lose valuable time contacting the wrong—”

  “What’s this?” said Saresh.

  I glanced at him in surprise. I couldn’t recall ever hearing him interrupt anyone before, and certainly not in the middle of an official report. He was frowning down at the senek cup in his hand. I saw that the silver senek pot was still at his elbow. He hadn’t passed it on yet.

  Zey and I looked at each other blankly. Both of us had prepared senek so many times the process had long since become automatic. I didn’t think anyone had voiced a complaint since the era of Khavi Vekesh, and even then, the offender had typically been me, not Zey.

  “Is there something wrong with the senek?” he asked.

  Saresh raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you call this?”

  Zey blinked. “I—”

  “This isn’t senek,” Saresh said, slowly and clearly. “This is trash.”

  By this time everyone in the room was watching the exchange in appalled fascination. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hathan, who as khavi had been the first to serve himself, pick up his own cup and taste the liquid within. He set the cup down slowly. He and Reyna exchanged a look.

  “I—I’ll make it again,” Zey stammered.

  “Don’t bother. The next batch will be trash as well, just like everything else you touch.”

  “Hadazi,” Reyna said quietly.

  Saresh didn’t even look at her. He reached out and swept the cup, saucer, tray, and senek vessel off the table and onto the floor. There was a tinkling sound as the crockery shattered. “There. More trash for you to clean up. That’s all you’re good for anyway. I thought you might be able to manage one simple task, but apparently even that’s asking too much from a Blank.”

  Zey flinched. Saresh laughed. The sound was low and mocking and cruel. Hearing it, I shivered. Something was terribly wrong. It had to be, for him to make a sound like that.

  Hathan leaned toward his elder brother. “What the hell is your problem?” he asked in a low voice that nonetheless carried clearly in the shocked silence.

  “My problem?” Saresh said coldly. “He’s the one with the problem. And I think we all know what it is. But since I seem to be the only one willing to name it, let me say it again. He’s a Blank, and he’s just as worthless as all the rest of them. It was better in the old days. They used to be strangled at birth, you know.”

  There was another horrified pause while everyone stared at Saresh. The first to speak was Ahnir. “Sigils of our fathers,” he murmured, “today we are truly alone in the dark.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hathan said.

  It was Daskar who answered. “Azdreth,” she whispered.

  I hadn’t heard the word for months, but I knew it at once. It meant the madness that lay between the stars, the specter of irrational rage that haunted all spacefaring Vardeshi.

  Somehow, against all probability, the Ascendant had been infected by the Flare.

  PART TWO:

  AZDRETH

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  In an instant everyone in the room was on their feet. No one moved more swiftly than Reyna. She caught my arm in a steely grip and shoved me in front of her out the door to the hallway. I looked back over my shoulder in time to see Saresh hurl himself at Zey, his weight carrying them both to the floor. Hathan and Ahnir lunged after him. Then the door slid shut, concealing the ugliness within.

  I tried unsuccessfully to pull free of Reyna’s grip. “What’s going on? Where are you taking me?”

  “The galley. You need to pack food and water for three days as quickly as possible.”

  “Three days? Why?”

  “The Echelon has a protocol for the Flare. All crew members are to be confined in separate areas of the ship with sufficient food and water for a three-day quarantine period. Two days is the longest a recorded outbreak has ever lasted, so if you can make it through three days, you should be safe.” She keyed open the door to the mess hall and shoved me in. “You have two minutes. Go.”

  After the door closed, I stood immobile for a moment, locked in place by fear and disbelief. Was this really happening? Could it be possible that a terror that struck perhaps once in a generation had taken root on the Ascendant? I heard again that low, grating laugh from Saresh. That was the sound of madness. There could be no mistaking it. A wash of sick fear propelled me into action. I ran into the galley, grabbed an empty
dish tray, and loaded it with random food items. Then I found a large water jug and filled it. When I stepped out through the door, Reyna grabbed the jug in one hand and my arm in the other and drew me down the corridor.

  “This isn’t the way to my quarters,” I said.

  “I’m not taking you to your quarters. It’s too obvious. If anyone goes looking for you, that’s the first place they’ll look.” I stumbled after her until we reached the maze of storage rooms on helix one. She opened a door seemingly at random. “In here. I’m going to lock you in. The door will be programmed with a time lock. It won’t open for anyone for three full days. Turn off your flexscreen and leave it off. If anyone hails you through the ship’s comm system, don’t answer. From this moment forward, no one is trustworthy. Anyone could be infected. Including me. The only way to stay safe is to stay in this room. Alone. Good luck.”

  “This isn’t really happening,” I said, hoping for reassurance even while I knew there was none to be found. “Is it?”

  “You know Saresh. You’ve seen his mind. You heard how he spoke to Zey just now. Was that the man you know?”

  “No,” I admitted. “But aren’t there rumors about the Flare, every now and then? Don’t they usually turn out to be false? Maybe Daskar was wrong.”