Bright Shards

by Meg Pechenick

  “Oh, right. My mistake. You’re the guy charged with transporting the most qualified representative of humanity safely to your homeworld. How’s that going?”

  “From your point of view,” Hathan said, “it appears to be going exceptionally well. Our misfortune works to your advantage.”

  “Your ‘misfortune,’” Fletcher repeated. “That’s an interesting way to describe nearly beating someone to death.”

  “Just think, if you’d been first on the List, it might have been you.”

  Each of them spoke so lightly it was hard to reconcile the coldness of the words with their tone. I glanced around at the others, wondering if someone ought to intervene, but Reyna was as inscrutable as ever, and Saresh and Sohra actually looked amused. Was this a peculiarly Vardeshi type of verbal sparring which Fletcher had mastered on the Azimuth along with, apparently, everything else? Or was it exactly what it seemed to be, which was primitive masculine posturing, regardless of species? Either way, I decided to let it go and enjoy the illusion of being fought over.

  “When do you launch for Prime?” Hathan was asking.

  “A week.”

  “What ship?”

  “The Sidereus.”

  “That’s an Echelon ship,” Sohra said in surprise.

  “It seemed the safest course,” said Reyna.

  “Are you going?” I asked her.

  “I was offered the posting. I declined it.”

  “So you could keep me from doing more stupid things,” I guessed.

  “Or try, at any rate,” she agreed.

  And just like that, the tension dissipated. The conversation became lively and general. Some time later, returning from a drinks run with Sohra, I found Fletcher and Hathan engrossed in what appeared to be a perfectly amicable dice game. I seized the opportunity to study them covertly. Viewed in profile, they were like an unconscious portrait of their respective species: Fletcher lounging back with a kind of insouciant grace, one arm stretched across the cushioned back of the seat beside him, Hathan sitting forward with his elbows resting on the table, fingers woven together. In attitude, in coloring, they were as different as sunlight and shadow. Absorbed in contemplation of the ways in which they diverged, I was caught off guard when Fletcher made a comment in the North Continent dialect that won a soft laugh from Hathan. Hearing it, I felt the same wistful ache I always had, and I acknowledged to myself that my feelings for him were unchanged. But. There was zero chance that anything would ever come of them. And I was lonely, and Fletcher was here, and it required no great leap of the imagination to speculate that he was lonely too. Was I obsessed enough to turn away from a real if transitory connection in favor of a fantasy? I still didn’t know. The moment of decision came only later, during a lull in the conversation, when Hathan checked his flexscreen and said it was time for him to be on his way.

  “Early night?” Saresh asked.

  “Late one, more likely. I’m meeting Rhevi Garian for a drink.”

  “Sidra’s brother?” Reyna inquired. “Is he still on the Meridian?”

  “He’s transferring to the Star of Erasik.” Hathan rose to leave.

  I waited until he was gone before asking, “Who’s Sidra?”

  “His fiancée,” Saresh said, his tone carefully neutral.

  I nodded and sat back with my glass, manufacturing an expression of polite interest, as Fletcher began telling a story about his time on the Azimuth. My mind, however, was whirling. At last I had a name to attach to Hathan’s mysterious betrothed. Sidra Garian. Who had a brother in the Fleet, a brother with whom Hathan was sufficiently friendly to meet for a drink. Why, I asked myself tartly, did that information make me want to slink back to my room, crawl under the covers, and cry? I had spent enough time over the last six months staring at the gold sigil on his hand. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known the woman existed. Finding out that she had a name shouldn’t be such a big damned surprise.

  Soon afterward there came a more general fracturing of our party, some people moving on to another bar while others returned to their rooms. I glanced at Fletcher and found him watching me. I took a last moment of internal quiet to weigh my decision, then said casually, “Want to get out of here?”

  “Sure,” he said, matching my tone.

  We said our goodbyes to the others. I asked Officer Rathis to take us back to the Green Zone. Fletcher walked beside me in a charged silence that made my heart beat faster. When we reached the door, I keyed in the entry code and stepped inside. Fletcher followed and closed the door behind us. We stood there a moment, alone in the stillness, looking at each other. Then I took his hand and drew him after me toward my room. Inside, I dropped his hand and turned toward him. His arms closed around me. I felt the warmth of his body against the entire length of mine. I gasped, dizzied by his scent, intoxicating at such close range, and by the sudden ferocity of my need. He ran his thumb along the line of my jaw, lifting my chin. His lips brushed lightly against mine. The teasing contact was maddening, inadequate. I put my hand on the back of his neck and pulled him down to me again, my mouth seeking his. He met my urgency with his own. In that instant I knew I had been right: about his loneliness, about his desire. We felt the same things. We were the same. It was only when we were stumbling toward my bed across a floor already littered with most of our clothing that he pulled away long enough to ask, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  It was the same question Saresh had asked me before each of the Listenings. The unbidden echo was jarring, but the answer was the same. “I’m sure.”

  “Oh, thank God,” he said fervently. I laughed and pulled him down with me onto the bed, all thoughts of other men and other intimacies forgotten once again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  One night with Fletcher turned into two and then three. There was no talk of love or promises or meeting up again on Earth. I didn’t ask him if he had someone waiting back home, and he didn’t ask me. We both understood that whatever there was between us existed only for this stolen handful of days on Elteni. I was glad he saw it that way too. I needed his companionship and his humor and his warmth in the night. I didn’t need anything more from him than that.

  We agreed that, to maintain our professionalism, it would be best to be discreet. The logistics of our assignations, of course, were easy to conceal. The Green Zone was our private territory; Vardeshi intrusions were rare and never unannounced. The connection between us was harder to hide. In every social gathering we watched each other, drawn by the transparent play of emotion on another human face. When speaking Vardeshi, we constantly interrupted ourselves and each other to confer on translations and analogies. Fletcher’s grammar was better, but mine was the richer lexicon, a consequence of my being a crew member rather than a passenger. Speaking English, we made pointless cultural references for the sheer delight of having them understood. We tested each other’s humanity with endless rapid-fire trivia questions. “Worst childhood fear?” “Quicksand.” “Favorite ice-cream flavor?” “Peanut-butter cup.” “How many days in a week?” “Eight. Oh, sigils, I mean seven. Seven!”

  Saresh, overhearing one of these exchanges, said in some alarm, “Eyvri, have you spoken to Daskar about these lapses in memory? They could be related to the Listening.”

  “Oh, no! It’s a game,” I assured him hastily. “We’re just pretending.”

  “Pretending . . . to forget things?”

  I looked at Fletcher, who waited, his eyes dancing, for my explanation. “We’re . . . It’s kind of hard to explain. I guess you’d say we’re pretending to be Vardeshi spies impersonating humans.”

  “Poorly,” Reyna added.

  “I’m sure your real spies are much more convincing,” Fletcher said.

  She replied coolly, “They’ve escaped detection thus far, haven’t they?”

  “I can’t tell when your Echelon friend is joking,” he confided to me in a perfectly audible voice.

  “Reyna never jokes,” I said, deadpan, and caught the
gleam of approval in her dark eyes.

  It was the fourth day after my release from quarantine. We were standing on Elteni’s largest observation deck, whose several tiers afforded panoramic views of the snowflake-shaped starhaven and a nearby nebula through a wall of viewports perhaps three stories high. Even I had to concede that the effect was stunning. I wore a simple dress and a brightly embroidered scarf I’d bought in the marketplace after Khiva assured me that it had no potentially embarrassing cultural significance. Fletcher was distractingly handsome in jeans, a blazer, and a crisp white shirt. My colleagues, in darkly elegant Vardeshi formal wear, each had a glass of some unidentifiable crystalline spirit in hand. Fletcher and I were once again drinking champagne, a case of which, I now knew, had been sent out with him on the Azimuth in the hope that it would eventually be approved for Vardeshi consumption. It hadn’t been, and we were conscientiously eliminating the need to transport it back. The occasion was my official welcome reception, which was to follow the familiar pattern of cocktail hour, dinner, and brief performance. The cocktail hour was drawing to a close. I had been introduced to the commanders of Elteni’s Fleet and Echelon branches and had made dutiful small talk for the requisite half hour before taking refuge in the company of my friends.

  “There are a lot of Vardeshi who could pass for human,” Fletcher said thoughtfully. “Not so many humans who could pass for Vardeshi.”

  I said airily, “Speak for yourself. I’m told I blend in perfectly.”

  Hathan joined us in time to hear my assertion and the laughter that followed it. “Blend in with who?” he asked.

  “Us,” Saresh said.

  Hathan nodded. “Ah, yes. Virtually indistinguishable.”

  “Suvi Ekhran could probably pass for human.” I heard the error in my speech too late to correct it. Once again, I’d used the wrong honorific. Now that Hathan had joined the group, Reyna was no longer its highest-ranking member. Hathan murmured the correction. So did Fletcher. Reflexively I whacked him hard on the arm, forgetting that he was holding a champagne flute. He kept hold of the glass, but half of its contents splashed onto the floor. Laughing, he pulled out his flexscreen and pretended to speak into it. “Paging Specialist Irnik. Avery’s becoming violent. We’re going to need some more of that tranquilizer, stat.”

  “Very funny,” I said acidly. “I didn’t realize the assholes of Earth were sending a delegation.”

  Fletcher’s grin was unrepentant. “Call me whatever you want, just get the honorific right.” He went off to look for a refill while I was still searching for an adequately scathing reply.

  Hathan said quietly, “I didn’t know you minded being corrected.”

  “You get to correct me. He doesn’t. He’s supposed to be in my corner.”

  He watched Fletcher make his way back to us from the drinks table, stopping on the way to speak with Elteni’s governor, a man named Edris who had welcomed me with a cool courtesy I infinitely preferred to Tavri’s manufactured warmth. “Is he?”

  “Yeah. I think he is.”

  “Good.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m in your corner too, you know.”

  An exhilarated thrill ran through me, but my reply, I was pleased to hear, sounded perfectly steady. “I know.”

  It had all the makings of a wonderful evening. At dinner, Fletcher and I were seated side by side, surrounded by a mix of friends and dignitaries. The conversation was effervescent, the cuisine superb, at least to a palate starved for fresh ingredients. The list of Vardeshi foods approved for humans had more than doubled in length since our departure from Arkhati, and Specialist Irnik, whatever I might think of him personally, had at least thought to include allergen tests in his battery of examinations. It was with shocked delight that I now found myself permitted to eat something approximating a salad. Fletcher was less enthusiastic about the vegetables, but he attacked the main dish, a small roasted fowl, with gusto.

  “Tastes like chicken,” he said gleefully.

  I laughed. “Of all the stupid clichés—”

  I never finished the sentence. With an odd sense of dislocation, I found myself standing beside the door to the corridor, my hand on the panel. I had no memory of getting up or crossing the short distance from my chair. The blood was thundering in my ears, and my breath came in gasps. Bewildered, I looked back toward the table. No one else had moved. Everyone was staring blankly at me. Everyone, that is, except Hathan, whose eyes held grief and terrible knowledge. There was an agonizing silence. Then two servers came cautiously forward to sweep up the remains of Khiva’s water glass, which had just shattered on the floor. The sound of breaking glass must have tripped a flight instinct so primal it had bypassed my mind and taken direct control of my body.

  With unhurried movements, Fletcher put down his kevet and pushed his chair back from the table. He came over to me and said gently, “Let’s get some air.”

  I nodded jerkily. “Yeah. Good idea.”

  We walked down one corridor and then another, preceded and followed at a discreet distance by our security staff, until my adrenaline began to ebb, leaving me feeling shaky and sick but once again in full control. I was glad Fletcher was there. He didn’t pester me with questions or conjectures. He reserved his attention for the signs at each corridor junction, glancing my way only once or twice. When we’d been walking for about ten minutes, I stopped in a sanitation room to drink from the tap. The cold water on my wrists as I held my cupped hands under the stream pushed the nausea back a little further. When I came out, Fletcher was speaking to someone on his flexscreen. Seeing me, he pressed the screen against his shirt, not to conceal it but to keep it from picking up our voices. I wanted to laugh. I’d never been able to locate the mouthpiece on mine either. “It’s Rhevi Daskar,” he said. “Do you want to talk to her?”

  I shook my head. “Just tell her I’m okay. It wasn't a flashback, more like a . . . reflex, I guess.”

  He finished the call, put away his flexscreen, and studied me. “You’re shivering. Do you want my jacket?”

  “Actually, I’d rather be cold. But thanks.”

  “Where do you want to go now?”

  I sighed. “Back to the dinner, I guess. If I don’t go back, it becomes a thing, right? More of a thing, I mean. I’m sure they’re all talking about me right now.”

  Fletcher put his hands on my shoulders and looked into my face. “Avery. Forget what anyone thinks. Where do you want to go?”

  With a laugh that was half a sob, I leaned forward until I could rest my head on his shoulder. He folded his arms around me, careless of the security personnel looking on. I said into his jacket, “I want to go to Vardesh Prime. And I want to go home. But neither of those things is going to happen tonight, so for now let’s go back to the stupid dinner. Just promise me you won’t leave me alone in there.”

  “I promise,” Fletcher said steadily, “that I will not leave you alone.”

  We retraced our steps to the observation deck. As we settled into our seats again, I had cause once more to be grateful for the Vardeshi habit of discretion. No stifled laughter or sudden embarrassed hush heralded our arrival. The conversations taking place around our end of the table had clearly been going on for some time; they hadn’t been hastily snatched up like dropped knitting when we walked in. In our absence, our fellow diners had moved on to the savory course. Our plates had been cleared away, and smaller ones with artfully arranged cheese and olives had taken their place. I wasn’t hungry, but I picked at my cheese and watched Fletcher chase an olive around his plate with his kevet, cursing under his breath. I was fairly sure he was doing it for my benefit. It was still funny. I watched Saresh ask the Echelon officer next to him a dull question about ship resupply protocols and listen with every appearance of interest to her equally dull response. That, too, was for my benefit, I knew. At one point I looked up to see Zey watching me from across the table. It had been a very long time since he’d looked at me directly. His eyes, in the lantern-lit twilight, were twin poo
ls of darkness. We stared at each other for a long time, two islands of quiet amid the low hum of conversation that surrounded us. I was the first to look away.

  The cultural-exchange portion of the evening went off without incident. The Vardeshi gave a demonstration of something called wind painting, which had to do with manipulating charged particles that left fiery trails in the air, allowing a skilled artist to write lines of calligraphy that faded well before I could decipher them. Fletcher offered to translate for me. I stepped on his foot. When our turn came, improbably, he produced a guitar and sang a rendition of “Blackbird” so clear and light it was like the dream of a song. I sang along with him, softly, after making sure Hathan was nowhere nearby.

  By the end of the night, I was reasonably confident that I’d salvaged my reputation among the notables of Elteni. I was in the midst of saying goodbye to the governor when Khiva interrupted us, her mortification obvious, to apologize for catching her water glass with her elbow and knocking it off the table. I quickly reassured her that she hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “Come on, Khiva, I drop something every other day. Usually at officers’ dinner. It wasn’t your fault.” I added, conscious that the governor was listening with frank interest, that the sound had probably triggered a memory of my flexscreen shattering during the Flare.

  “A flight instinct?” Governor Edris asked in a tone of neutral interest, as if we were once again discussing ship resupply protocols. “That seems so—if you’ll forgive the term—primal.”

  “Unfortunately we still live in a world where those instincts are advantageous to survival,” said Fletcher, who had kept his promise faithfully and returned to my side after his performance was over.

  “Evidently so do we,” the governor said. The words might have been merely for form’s sake, the career diplomat ensuring the discreet exit of a problematic guest, but I liked him for saying them.

  * * *

  Fletcher had always been tender with me, but his lovemaking that night was cautious in a way it hadn’t been before. I wondered at the change but didn't ask about it. As I was beginning to drift toward sleep, however, he spoke into the quiet. “You’ve never talked to me about the Flare.”