By the Sea of Sand

by Megan Hart

  “Yes.” Jodah crossed his arms over his chest. “Anything else?”

  “Your eyes. The pupil of the left is a little larger than the other. It opens wider. Closes smaller. It’s recording everything you see, isn’t it?”

  Jodah hadn’t thought about it, but now that Rehker had pointed it out, all he could notice was how much clearer the world seemed looking through his left eye. When he looked at the other man, the data stream brightened, white and glaring, but Jodah could do little more than blink at it as the string of words and images flashed past him.

  “And you’ve got a lot going on in that brain, I bet. Oh, you can calculate the trajectory of a hornet as quick as that, can’t you?” Rehker snapped his fingers. “You wouldn’t even have to think about it. All the work would be done for you. They give the officers the best advantages, don’t they? Of course they do. Not for the rest of us, of course, not the under soldiers. The SDF couldn’t possibly do that.”

  Jodah had a memory of pain, vivid and yet welcome. He wanted to hold onto it, but it slipped away before he could. Even so, the flavor of it remained. The smell of something burning. An ache deep in his bones. An extra weight inside him as he got used to his new skeleton.

  “Nothing comes without cost, Rehker. The SDF gave me what I needed in order to lead.”

  “And in the end, Jodah-kah, you ended up the same as all the rest of us. Didn’t you?”

  Kah. The honorific was an old one, appended to the end of his name in the fenda style. The use of it had fallen out of favor years ago, then resurged in popularity in the viddies as a slang term, usually faintly insulting. Rehker had said it without a flinch, a simper, or a snide look, but somehow Jodah knew the man hadn’t intended it as respect.

  “Yes. I ended up just the like the rest of you. So there’s no need to call me kah.” Jodah looked at Pera, who hadn’t moved from her spot on the lounger. Her eyes wide, her grin wider, she couldn’t keep her adoring gaze from Rehker, who at last turned to face her.

  “Sweet Pera. The past is a shadow to you, isn’t it?”

  “Mostly,” she said.

  “And you’re glad of it?”

  “Mostly,” she said, this time with a pause before replying.

  Rehker frowned. “We don’t remember who we were or what happened to us, but we can look at each other and see the truth. I look at you, Jodah-kah, and I see a man who must’ve done great things. I’d have been proud to serve under you, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you,” Jodah said, not sure he could believe Rehker, no matter how sincere he sounded. There was something off-putting about the other man. Something sly. Or maybe it was simply the way he allowed Pera to dote on him, keeping her close to him and feeding her just enough attention to fan the flames of her desires, yet never, so far as Jodah could see, giving her what she wanted.

  “You’re welcome, Jodah-kah.”

  Irritated, Jodah frowned. “You don’t have to call me that.”

  “But it fits you so well,” Rehker replied with another of his wide grins that didn’t reach his eyes. “It suits him, doesn’t it, Pera?”

  “Oh, it does. Absolutely.”

  Jodah looked from one to the other, knowing the pair of them were somehow mocking but unable to figure out a way to say so without sounding too sensitive. He put a hand on his belly and gave each of them a formal half bow. “Thank you, Rehker-kah. Pera-kah. I’ll say the same for you.”

  This brought a sour giggle from Pera, but Rehker only looked at him with that same flat gaze. Jodah stared at the other man until he looked away. What they were up to, he couldn’t be sure and didn’t really care. Both of them were not well in their minds, which he could forgive. But disrespectful, that he had no time for.

  “Another time. I look forward to getting to know you better, Jodah-kah.” Rehker returned the formal gesture, though as with the use of kah it had a flavor of mockery. He turned to Pera. “Pera, a game of Golightly?”

  Rehker’s dismissal of Jodah was so clear it almost made him laugh, but he took the chance for escape, instead.

  Chapter 12

  The simple food had been expertly prepared. Several courses of grains and greens with sliced milka and milka pudding for afters. He dove into it like a starving man, savoring every flavor as though he’d never tasted it before. And maybe, he thought, watching the others at the table, he hadn’t. Or at least had not in so long that they might as well have been brand-new.

  The table conversation was lively and disjointed, but as with the other meals he’d shared at the table, nobody seemed to care if he joined in. Instead, he sat back and watched the others. Gathering information. Observing. Details formed patterns in his brain, making shining strands of color that became rapidly scrolling lines of analysis he could barely decipher.

  Venga, the old man. Not dressed appropriately, moving slowly, but faking much of his decrepitude. He also hoarded food beneath the heavy robes, a sure sign he’d been held for a long time in near starvation.

  Adarey and Stimlin, the women. Partners. Adarey spoke for Stimlin, but it was clear if you watched them how she relayed her needs and thoughts through subtle hand signals. Where would she have learned them? Data he hadn’t been aware he had filtered into the stream of details and patched them together, but he still didn’t know.

  The chatty and vibrant Rehker, who kept up a neverending stream of jokes to hide the constant tremor in his voice that didn’t come from fear. The sullen Pera, who looked with hidden longing at Rehker, but only when she thought he couldn’t see. Pera was the only one with visible scars, burns across her face and on her arms, exposed by the sleeves of her robes when she reached to serve herself.

  They were all military except for Vikus, Billis and . . . Teila. The woman. And of course her son and the ancient Fendalese female who served as the boy’s amira. All were soldiers, none of them as high ranking as he, though there was no way for him to know that for sure. It was just a feeling.

  He’d started having a lot more feelings.

  None of them treated him like an outsider. If he stood off from them, they didn’t seem to notice, or at least not enough to care. Nor did any of them try to pull him into the discussion, for which he was grateful. His head had begun to ache from the noise of conversation. Too much stimulation. He couldn’t stop collecting and compiling details into his mental data stream, even though none of the information made sense or triggered any responses.

  “Enhanced,” he said aloud, suddenly, startling himself and causing everyone else at the table to fall silent and stare at him. “I’m enhanced.”

  “In my day, we called it built up,” Venga said after a moment. “Got a chip in my brain, supposed to help me take pictures with my eyes like a camera. Never worked right.”

  Rehker laughed and struck an exaggerated pose. “Take a picture of this.”

  Venga snorted. “Like I’d want that stuck in my brain, no thank ya.”

  Jodah pushed away from the table, his head spinning and his meal unfinished. The chair clattered to the floor behind him hard enough to break. Rehker’s laughter stopped.

  “It was an old chair,” Teila said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I think I should go upstairs,” he said.

  “Everyone cleans their own plate from the table,” Vikus said.

  Teila gave him a stern look. “Vikus.”

  “Well,” the younger man said, “we do.”

  This time, Pera spoke up, the first time she’d said a word the entire meal. “A Rav Gadol wouldn’t clear his own plate from the table.”

  Rav Gadol. The term lit up something in the part of his brain that was constantly calculating. A sudden flare of agony caused him to press his fingertips to his temples. A chittering sound blocked out everything else for a moment, but then passed along with most of the pain. He straightened and looked at all of them.

  “I was the Rav Gadol. But now . . . I’m just a man.” With that, and a significant look at the now-sulking Vikus, he picked up his p
late and took it into the kitchen, where he put it in the sanitizer.

  When he turned, Teila was behind him, smiling. “Vikus doesn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

  “Yes, he does. It’s fine.” He tested the title again. Rav Gadol. It tasted right, felt right. It fit. But it wasn’t his name any more than Jodah was. “How did she know?”

  “Pera?” Teila moved past him with her own plate. “She knows a lot of things. You’d have to ask her.”

  “She’s right. I was a Rav Gadol. I can feel it.”

  “Do you remember anything . . . else?” Teila put her plate in the sanitizer and turned to him. She tilted her head, looking curious.

  With only an arm’s length between them, it would’ve been so easy to reach for her. Grab. Pull her closer. Slant his mouth over hers and . . .

  No.

  He backed away. If this was not a dream, she was a real woman and not here to slake his desires. He’d done her a great disservice by forcing his attentions on her. If it had not been rape, it had certainly been something close to coercion, and his stomach felt sick at the memories of her beneath him.

  “About your name? What we should call you?” She moved a step closer.

  He moved a step away.

  A flash of what seemed like disappointment shone in her face. “We could call you Rav, if you’d like. I said I’d be happy to call you whatever you like. Nobody else here likes to use their military titles.”

  “I don’t mean for them to treat me like their Rav,” he said stiffly. “It’s just a name. And no, I don’t want to be called that.”

  She nodded after a second’s hesitation. “All right, then. If that’s what you’d like. So . . . shall we keep calling you Jodah? Until you remember your own?”

  “What if I never do?”

  She studied him for a moment, her wide, dark eyes kinder than he deserved. When she reached to put her hand on his shoulder, he suffered her touch though it sent flames rippling through every nerve and left him raw. She squeezed him gently and when he didn’t respond, at least not in a way she could’ve seen, she let him go.

  “You will,” she said. “I know you will.”

  Chapter 13

  In the bright light of morning, two of the three suns risen and the smallest one, Elaris, peeking over the horizon, it was time to put out the lamp. It was one of Teila’s favorite parts of the day, when everyone else was still sleeping but she could look out across the Sea of Sand and see the whales at play.

  As a girl, her father had often brought her up here when he wasn’t at sea, to point out to her the different whales and their young. He’d learned them so well he could tell exactly when they’d breach and for how long, though he never gave them names.

  “They’re not pets, Tee,” he’d always told her solemnly. “And we can’t ever own them. Never forget that. They give us something precious, but they don’t belong to us.”

  Her father had lost his life to one of those whales. A cow, threatened by the whaler’s proximity to her baby, had unexpectedly turned on him. Not even the whaler’s metal hull could stand against an angry whale. None of the bodies of the whalers had been recovered. Teila had already taken over the lamp by then. She’d spent her days looking out across the sea to see if her father’s ship was coming home. Instead, the Sheirran Battle Fleet had sent her a viddy message telling her the wreckage had been discovered and that the ship’s final moments were recorded by its security systems. It had been foolish of her to expect a message from her father, and yet she’d wept when the footage showed only the whale rising out of the sand to slam its body onto the ship’s deck, over and over again.

  Two cycles later, she’d been out on the sea in her scudder, netting a milka pellet, when a pleasure cruiser had appeared on the horizon. They weren’t as uncommon back then, before such ships became luxuries only the wealthiest could afford and this edge of the Sea of Sand too far and difficult to reach. So much had changed even in these past few years, she thought, shielding her eyes to look out across the sea.

  No whales this morning. No pleasure cruisers like the one that had brought Kason to her. No whalers. Just the seemingly unending expanse of rolling, golden sand and the hint of a storm coming closer.

  There’d been a storm that day, too. Rare clouds had made the sky dark, and the winds had tossed the sands high into the air. Without the sun, the solar panels on her small craft hadn’t been able to provide her with enough power, and she’d needed to use her sail. The pleasure cruiser, which was much larger, had been in a similar situation except that it had no sails. Boats like that required so much power they were more often equipped with solar cells. She’d find out later that he’d drained them without making sure they were full again before the storm hit, and that was why the cruiser had gone dark. But at the time, all she could do was fight the wind to get herself to shore.

  By the time she’d made it there, the sea had been whipped into writhing, boiling hills and valleys, and a fine choking dust had clouded the air. Teila had watched for a minute or so before realizing with sick horror that that the lamp had not been lit. She’d run, taking the stairs two at a time, reaching the top in a thick sweat and ready to faint from the effort. By the time she got everything working, the visibility outside had become nil. With no sight of the pleasure cruiser, all she could do was make sure the lamp was working and entertain Vikus and Billis, mere toddlers belonging to the women who’d kept house for her father—and, by her son’s resemblance, had obviously shared his bed more than once or twice.

  She hadn’t been able to get the thought of the cruiser out of her mind. It had been far enough away when she first spotted it that it might not even be close to shore or the jagged rocks hidden under the deceptive layers of golden sand. It might’ve gone in another direction or found a place to anchor on one of the few islands out of her sight. But, pacing, trying to see through the storm, Teila had known that the cruiser was edging closer and closer to shore. She could only hope the light warned it.

  The lighthouse, as it turned out, was the only reason the pleasure cruiser had not ended up completely destroyed. The craft’s captain and only passenger had seen the light and been savvy enough to head for it, but the stormy sea had been too violent. Unable to fight the twisting sands, he’d aimed the craft for shore and initiated the escape sequence. However, without enough power, which ran out just before he crashed, he was unable to eject the metal pod that would’ve protected him from the sand and rocks and whales and anything else.

  Through the glass at the top of the lighthouse, Teila had watched the pleasure cruiser getting closer and closer, just a great dark shape in the shadows of swirling sand. She’d watched the interior lights gutter and go out. She’d held her breath, wondering if the passengers had managed to get out, or if they were going to be on board when it inevitably hit the reefs a few hundred septs from shore.

  The crack of the cruiser against the rocks now exposed by the shifting sands had been loud enough to vibrate the glass in the tower room. Though she had strained to see, all Teila had been able to make out was the dark shape a short distance off shore. When a swirling gust of wind parted the dust cloud long enough for her to catch a glimpse of the cruiser, broken and being sucked into the depths of the sea, she hadn’t thought twice.

  She’d run.

  At the base of the lighthouse, bored into the solid stone foundation, were two enormous platanium rings with several coiled lengths of rope made from the same metal hung between them. They each had hooks on the ends and were too heavy for her to lift. Luckily she didn’t have to. The rescue ropes were designed to be shot with an air gun toward a stranded ship and hooked onto it or whatever escape craft it had, then reeled in to pull the craft to shore. She’d never had to use the system, though when her father was home he had been fond of running practice rescue missions.

  The first shot had gone wild, taken by the wind. Heart in her throat, sand gritting her eyes to slits, Teila had set the trajectory for the second rope and
hook. With a silent prayer to the Three Mothers, she’d let it fly. The hook hit. The rope had gone taut. She’d pushed the button that would reel it in.

  Halfway to shore, the rope had gone slack. There was no way to shoot it again without reeling it all the way in, a complicated process that required more attention than she could’ve spared in the middle of this storm. Already her throat and mouth had gone dry, caked with thick dust. She’d barely been able to see.

  The lamp, on its round-about flash, had illuminated something in the sea. Teila had forced her way through the wind and dust to the edge of the rocky grass to where the sea began. Something had floundered there, grabbing onto the rope but going under. Coming up and going under again.

  She hadn’t been able to toss out the hook, but she could hold onto the rope and wade out into the roiling, rolling sands. It had gone over her head in a minute, soft and loose and getting into every part of her. She’d pulled the hood of her robe over her face and could only feel along the metal rope, kicking her feet steadily and climbing the hillocks of fine sand that shifted endlessly all around her. Some planets had seas of water under which a person couldn’t breathe, but even covered with sand she could manage to sip a few breaths here and there. The hood’s filter had helped a bit with the dust, but not enough to keep her from getting dizzy.

  She’d been unable to yell out. All she’d been able to do was reach blindly into the clouds of dust, groping for what she’d seen clinging to the end of the rope. And then, just before she could go no further, a hand had gripped hers.

  And that had been Kason, the man she married.

  She turned at the sound behind her, knowing already it would be him. It was in the way the air moved around her when he was close. She said nothing, just watched as he entered the lamp room. He didn’t see her at first, and something broke a little inside her that he wasn’t as attuned to her. Once it had been the same for him.

  “It’s a storm,” she spoke up when he noticed her. “Out there. Far off, but it will be here by the afternoon, I think.”