Pre-dinner drinks were being served when she went into the dining room. There was nothing fancy about this, it was just a tray of fruit juices on the serving trolley from which people were helping themselves, taking a few minutes just to mix and mingle.
‘Shion,’ Buzz smiled, his look as much appraising as it was welcoming. Shion had been excused dinner all the while she was needed to tend to her aunt, but as soon as the chamlorn started taking her own meals, Buzz had drawn Shion back into the wardroom community. He was president of the mess by a handshake agreement with the Venturi’s own executive officer, who had the right to that position had he chosen to insist on it. As it was, he was happy to leave the hospitality in Buzz’s hands. ‘You look like you’ve had a good day,’ Buzz observed, seeing that Shion was more relaxed today than the preoccupied state of recent evenings.
‘Very good, thanks,’ Shion said, with an answering smile. Her aunt had not only been asking alert questions, but had been telling Shion some of the family news from back home – a lovely, warm thing in itself, but so heartening, too, to find her aunt taking the lead in conversation, no longer so dependent and passive. ‘And you?’ she glanced significantly at the spot by his left elbow where Mister would have been, had Buzz brought him to the wardroom.
Buzz chuckled. He didn’t bring the LIA agent with him to dinner. This was his time out too, after all. But he had, after the last few days, been gradually relaxing the restrictions on Mister. The initial month of strict supervision was over now and Buzz was introducing small, conditional privileges. So Mister was allowed to have his dinner in the interdeck refectory so long as he was with someone Buzz had approved as a minder.
‘I left him with Jer,’ he said and Shion chuckled too. Jermane Taerling would certainly be more than happy to take the LIA man under his wing and would talk enough for both of them no matter how morose Mister might be. But other people were coming up to say hello to her, then, asking after her aunt but just as keen to share the latest shipboard goss.
After only ten minutes of this and the traditional teasing of the usual suspects who tried to slide in late, they made their way to table. During the day, the wardroom was set with four eight-seater tables and people just sat where they liked. For dinner, though, the tables were pushed together and seating was by rank. It didn’t seem two minutes ago, from Shion’s perspective, that she’d been down at the end of the table with the chattering Subs. But now she was an Elcom, though the most recently promoted to that rank, so only just above the senior Lts. This put Lt Lionard, the astrogator, on her left hand side – not the choice she would have made for a dinner companion, but that was the point, here, that everyone was included. And Lionard was, too, very much more pleasant company than he had been during earlier phases of the mission.
Lionard, almost unbelievably to all those who’d known him for years as Lionard the Miserable, was happy. Actually happy. For the first time in his career he had a navigational challenge he felt was truly worthy of his talents. He was jumping out of bed in the mornings full of enthusiasm, actually talking to people over breakfast and bustling off to work with a spring in his step and a sparkle in his eyes.
Shion, having asked how the astrogation had gone today, heard all about it as the first course was served. Un-dress dinner was a two course meal, with exactly the same menu choices on offer to the crew at the mess deck galley hatches. The only difference here was that officers made their choices earlier in the day, with their plate being sent up to the wardroom in the serving trolley. Sides like salads, bread and condiments were provided in sharing dishes. There were no stewards on duty – the officers took turns on a rota.
Tonight was Shion’s turn for clearing the table, so once the main course had been eaten she excused herself from Lionard’s account of all the navigation features they’d encountered through the day, clearing the table ready for desserts.
‘Oh, no…’ she laughed, as the dessert dish was placed in front of her. Shion did not need to eat much, so the portions served to her were tiny and she generally went for the lightest option too. Tonight, she’d ordered a small amount of grapefruit sorbet with three fresh berries and a balsamic spritz.
What she’d got, though, was a large slice of gateau thick with cream and mousse, with chocolate coated berries and a serving of Chantilly cream on the side.
‘Is there any way,’ Shion asked, looking up the table at Buzz, ‘that we can stop her doing this?’
Buzz joined in the laughter which broke out at that, but shook his head. Ever since the incident where Shion had broken down in tears – something which had shocked and worried all of her shipmates – Simmy had taken it upon herself to keep Shion’s spirits up with little treats like this, overriding the boring healthy option stuff to send her something really yum. Attempts to explain to her that it really wasn’t okay for an ordinary star rating to do this to a Lt Commander had run straight into Simmy’s arsenal of breezy self-assurance, followed by hurt puppy eyes as required and the ultimate play-down when the matter was pressed, the skipper doesn’t mind.
Nor did he. Alex, Shion knew, found the whole thing highly amusing and if not actively encouraging his steward, had certainly given her his consent to ‘look after’ Shion in this way. And so long as she had his permission, nothing anybody else could say was going to stop her from giving Shion little treat-surprises whenever Simmy felt that she might benefit from one. And tonight, evidently, was such an occasion.
‘Never mind,’ Commander Morry Morelle, the engineer, grinned at her, flourishing his own plate. ‘I’ll help!’
Others volunteered too and after some plate-passing, Shion got, at least, some sorbet and berries. And it was lovely that, even if it wasn’t the treat Simmy had intended. It felt wonderful to be so much an easy part of this group, even in small things like them having a laugh over sharing desserts. And it was good, too, so good, that nobody felt the need to jump in and offer to take her turn at clearing table. There were no special voices around her, here, no special treatment, she was one of them.
Dessert concluded and the table cleared, they stood up to have coffee – another ten minute mix and mingle bringing the half hour dinner to its close. At 1950, all those who were on duty went off to get changed back into shipboard rig and head back to work.
Shion got changed, too, back into the comfortable overalls, and headed up to the venue where she’d arranged to meet Ali. This was part of the interdeck complex up on deck one.
It was almost like a separate community in its own right up there. This was where the command school class, the Diplomatic Corps people and the Second’s researchers had their quarters, in cabins up in the for’ard section of the deck. They took their meals in the refectory, which was also open as a leisure facility for the rest of the crew, along with the three lounges which led off from the dining area. One, the Promenade, was a multi-function venue usually set up for events in the evenings. The second and third, though, were permanent fixtures.
They were, physically, part of the refectory space, which Shion walked through on her way to meet Ali. She smiled a little to herself, too, at seeing Mister and Jermane Taerling together at one of the tables. Mister had evidently long since finished his dessert but Jer was still eating his, mostly because he spent at least five minutes talking and flourishing his dessert fork in the air for every time he actually used it. Mister didn’t seem to be minding it, though – after a month of being compelled to follow Buzz around having to keep quiet all the time and with very few people saying anything to him, it was a relief just to have someone chatting to him like a normal person.
At the far end of the refectory were the two lounges. One, Donuts, was on a gantry above the other, actually creating the low-ceilinged cosy environment of the Snug. It was a club-style lounge, below, with deep armchairs and a sound-baffled, peaceful environment. Noisy or prolonged chattering was not encouraged, there.
For that, you went up to the upper level. This was Donuts, the venue where you came to tal
k. Conversation here could be highly academic – the big table at one side with the box of donuts on it which gave the venue its name was the academic hangout and always popular. It was early in the evening yet but there were four people there already, chatting about research. Seeing Shion come swinging up the zero-gee ladderway they looked hopefully at her, beckoning her to come and join them, but when she indicated with a smile that she was meeting Ali, they just waved and resumed their animated conversation.
Ali was waiting for her at one of the smaller tables with easy chairs around it. He had a mug of coffee for himself, but did not offer to get Shion a drink – not rudeness, just his knowledge that she wouldn’t eat or drink anything else this evening.
‘All right,’ Shion greeted him with a friendly grin and sat down in the easy chair facing his. ‘Reboot. Stories in my culture come in three kinds – the ten element story you tell to small children with a short attention span, the hundred element which is the longest the ayalee tell and the thousand element which are the stories told by the chamlorn. As a chamlorn myself I was required to learn these stories and to tell them when asked – no great effort in itself, of course, since we have eidetic memories. But that is one of the functions of the chamlorn, to serve as culture-keepers, remembering and telling all the stories which define who we are as a people.’
Ali nodded understanding of that. He knew better than anyone how important stories were as a means of sharing values, beliefs, a sense of cultural identity. But he was looking a question at her. ‘Elements?’
‘The pattern of a story,’ Shion explained. ‘In the same way that many of your stories are based on a pattern of three – three witches, three princes – or seven, the seven adventurers who set out on a quest and only the seventh succeeds. That pattern. Only with us it is ten, a hundred, a thousand that are the significant numbers. So, looking at the structure of the Man who said No, there is the scenario, the ten, hundred or thousand element versions and the moral conclusion of a cautionary tale. Yes?’
Ali nodded again, face alight with just exactly the same fascination he’d shown the first time he and Shion had this conversation, not long after she had first joined the Fourth.
‘So,’ Shion said, ‘in the Man who said No, the scenario is this, that a young man, a brilliant young man, as handsome as he is clever, decides that he is going to make a wonderful new kind of airship, a ship which will go higher and faster than any other aircraft there has ever been. So he starts to work, okay?’ Ali nodded. ‘Then the elements come in,’ Shion told him. ‘One woman after another comes to see him and offers him their love. Even the ten-element version is immensely symbolic in the way that the women are described and the various gifts that they offer and it would take way too long, really would, to explain to you why a woman offering a particular kind of tea-cup as a present to a man has Pirrellothian audiences rocking with laughter. But the point is each of these women is described in detail as individuals, the things that make them special, they are fully rounded characters while the man remains just the man who is building his wonderful machine. He doesn’t get a name, we are never told what kind of things he likes to eat or do or anything else about him. And woman after woman – ten, a hundred or a thousand of them – come to him offering their love only for him to say no, go away, I am far too busy building my wonderful machine. When a chamlorn is telling this story, it make take two years or more – a new episode every time, same story, a woman with a great deal to offer, rejected out of hand because he is obsessed with his machine. And this goes on, his whole life, until the end.’ She grinned at him. ‘When he dies.’
Ali waited. And then, as Shion just sat there, ‘Uh?’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ Shion said. ‘A thousand women turned away and at the end, he dies. Just dies of old age.’
‘And the moral of the story is…?’ Ali queried.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Shion asked. She was curious to see if he’d have the same answer as he had back when he’d been a young able star rating. Back then his first thought had been, ‘Get your totty while it’s available!’
‘Hmmn,’ said Ali, this time with considerably more life experience and maturity. ‘What happens,’ he asked, ‘with the machine? Did he build his wonderful new aircraft?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Shion said. ‘He built better and better ones all the way through his life, always trying to build something that would go faster and higher. He was, in your terms, the great inventor of his time and at the time of his death he had built an aircraft which flew so high and so fast it could circle the world in an hour. But nobody cared, of course, nobody wanted it, nobody was even interested, nobody but him.’
‘Really?’ Ali was surprised.
‘Really,’ Shion assured him. ‘High and fast are not desirable commodities in Pirrellothian culture. That is part of the cautionary tale – going high in the air is dangerous, not only in taking you up so high there isn’t enough air to breathe, but in getting close to the potentially deadly pathogens my people have come to feel are pretty much lurking on the far side of the stratosphere. And fast, who wants fast? Our stories are full of situations where people try to do things too quickly and come a cropper. Careful, thoughtful patience are the values to be promoted. So yes, he made a wonderful machine, but the only person who wanted it was him. So when he died, the machine was abandoned.’
‘Oh, I see – so his life was wasted, doing something nobody valued and rejecting all those offers of love… is this something to do with having children, too? Are men expected to…’
Shion laughed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Disappointing as it may be, Ali, there is no culture of men being compelled to procreate with as many beautiful women as they can, hurr hurr.’
Some people looked round as Ali gave a roar of laughter at that, but only to grin at the sight of him and Shion having a laugh like that.
‘The choice to have children,’ Shion said, when Ali had stopped guffawing, ‘is entirely personal. And men, to be delicate about it, can contribute their genetic material without even meeting the woman who has decided that the time is right for her to have a child. Fathers are not present in the lives of their children in the same way as they are in most of your cultures, either; if you ask people to talk about their ancestors they will only list the maternal line. So no, it isn’t really about the Man who said No failing to leave a genetic legacy, that isn’t really an issue. The point is that his life was unfulfilled. He was never satisfied. Even when he died he was still trying to build a higher and faster machine, so there was never any fulfilment even in his work. And he rejected love, which my people consider a thousand times more important than any work satisfaction. His life was empty, pointless, without fulfilment or meaning. Even small children on my world would get that from the payoff of ‘and then he died’, understanding that it meant he died without achieving his dream and without ever having loved. So the moral of the story is…’
‘Don’t go chasing rainbows,’ Ali said, ‘when the gold is right there in your hands.’
Shion grinned. ‘That’s it.’ She agreed and added, ‘That’s what I told you, first time.’
‘Reboot!’ Ali said, with a grin. ‘And I think – I do have a memory of you telling me a story, sitting with you on the mess deck, on the Heron and you telling me a story… a very old story?’
Shion nodded. ‘You asked me what the oldest story was that my people remember and still tell,’ she confirmed. ‘And I told you one that I know must go back at least a million years. It’s a funny one, too – rather nice, I think, that our oldest stories are jokes. But it wouldn’t be funny to anyone else. You didn’t get it at all when I told it to you and though I tried to explain we ended up in such a tangle that we had to go for the ‘don’t worry, it isn’t important.’’
‘Hmmn,’ Ali said. ‘Try me again?’
Shion obliged. It was quite a long story by human standards, even cutting it to the absolute minimum. It was a good three quarters of an hour later that she re
ached the punchline.
‘… and there they sat until the sun went down.’
She sat back, nodding to show that she’d finished and Ali looked at her in frank bemusement.
‘Er..?’
‘Yes, see?’ Shion said. ‘Funny just doesn’t cross between our cultures very well. A lot of the things you laugh at, like lavatorial humour, aren’t the slightest bit amusing to me and a lot of your humour is founded in cruelty, too, which took some getting used to. But...’ she pondered. ‘How can I explain…’ She was thoughtful for a few seconds and then nodded. ‘Think of it like this,’ she said. ‘There’s a funny story told of one your presidents, I believe – that she had a lot of people to dinner who didn’t know how to behave at such events and so were watching and copying whatever she did, right?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Ali remembered and chuckled. ‘There are loads of variants of that one,’ he said, ‘the socially inept making fools of themselves by trying to copy their host. But you mean the napkin thing, right?’
‘Yes, the napkin she hid food in because she had a stomach upset and they all did the same,’ Shion confirmed. ‘As you say, social ineptitude of the outsider, funny in any culture. And in ours, the behaviour of those visitors, sitting as they did in that garden, that is just as absurd. It was like – oh, I don’t know.’ She tried another analogy. ‘People who’ve travelled right across the League specially to see the Constitution,’ she said. ‘Special trip, history buffs, most important document ever written and they are spending months and a lot of money to go to Chartsey and see the original, okay? Only when they get there they get themselves so confused that they end up taking holos of a bus timetable and saying wow, isn’t it amazing?’ She chuckled as he laughed. ‘And the moral of the story is, if there is one, that if you are going to make a special trip to visit a culturally significant garden, make sure you are sitting in the right one.’
‘Oh.’ Ali said and all at once, enlightenment flashed onto his face. ‘Oh, I get it!’ he exclaimed and started to laugh. ‘Wow!’ he said. ‘I really do! I get it, this time!’ He gave her an appreciative nod. ‘You,’ he observed, ‘have got a lot better at explaining things, Elcom.’
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