Walls of Wind and the Occasional Diamond Thief Boxed Set

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  ***

  I wake with a gasp, my heart pounding. There’s a dry, hot feeling behind my eyes like I want to cry. The cool recycled air of the ship, with its bitter, metallic musk, fills my nose and mouth and lies cold and heavy in my chest.

  I sit up, hugging my knees, and pull the blanket around me. “Not real,” I whisper to myself. The dream is not, but this is real: I am on my way to the planet that killed my father.

  “I won’t stay on Malem,” I mumble under the covers. “I’m going back with the ship.” My mother’s dream-laugh taunts me even as I say it.

  To drive it from my head, I think of Etin. The last time I saw him, he was coming off the Homestar after a run. I was waiting there, to tell him the O.U.B. had hired me to translate for them and I’d be going off-planet.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Various places.” I made a vague circular gesture with my hand as we walked toward the transport offices where he had to check in. I had just come from there, checking out. The ship was waiting for me, but I’d insisted on talking to Etin before leaving.

  “They’re going to pay for Owegbé’s transplant.”

  He stopped. “Kia, that’s not your—” I could see it in his face, his concern for me, and it warmed me. But I couldn’t let him try to argue with me. He didn’t know everything and I hoped he never would, so I cut him short. “They’re paying the rest of my university fees when I get back, too.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder. “I know that’s not why you’re doing it,” he said. “You should tell her, Kia.”

  “I can’t.” I waved toward a ship across the ’strip. Agatha stood in the open door, waiting for me. “We’re leaving now.”

  “So soon?” He bent and hugged me tightly. “Thank you,” he whispered into my ear. “Come home safe.”

  That was a good moment. It carried me through boarding and liftoff. I thought of it while I held my ears to deaden the terrible scream of the drives just before my first leap, and in the hours of vomiting afterward. It even made up for the pilot’s surly refusal to speak to me after I threw up on his boots.

  Thank you. Come home safe. I have done something right at last. Etin is proud of me.

  The memory barely has time to cheer me before the sardonic laugh from my dream returns, carrying another memory, of Agatha knocking on the door to my room to tell me I’d received an incoming ’cast. One look at her face and I didn’t want to hear it, but I followed her to the comset anyway. The Adept, her face as expressionless over the ’net as when she handed out my sentence, informed me that my mother’s body had rejected her new heart. She is dead.

  I never said goodbye. We never got the chance to...I don’t know...stop being angry at each other? I was so sure the O.U.B.’s money would solve everything, I decided to wait to see her till I got back.

  I get up and wash my face, determined to set aside both the dream and the memory. A glance at my workstation tells me it’s the middle of the night. I shrug. It’s always the middle of the night in space. I order the comp on, choose one of my language programs and plug the ’phones in my ears. When I return I’ll get an implant. I can afford one now.

  The ship is quiet except for the subliminal vibration and the low, persistent hum of its drive, which has begun to sound like the murmur of unpleasant voices. It’s no bigger than the Homestar: a two-man operation—captain and engineer—with a cargo bay, rooms for a couple of passengers, the caf, the cockpit, the com room, and the drive. It makes me feel claustrophobic, this tiny shell we’re hurtling through space in. I focus on the voice in my ears, speaking Kandaran. I intend to learn it on this trip. Perfectly.

  Three hours later my head is spinning, but I’ve learned the regular verbs. That’s because there are so few of them. I yank the ’phones from my ears and head to the caf, a cramped little room with cold metal walls on all six sides. I hate the place. It makes me feel like a worm, a small black slug caught inside a tin can, living off the contents. But it’s time for Agatha’s morning language lesson, and the caf is the only eat-and-meet space on this ship. My head aches from lack of sleep, but Agatha can’t afford to miss another lesson. It took two weeks after I learned of my mother’s death before I resumed her language lessons, and only because she tried to wish me good morning and instead asked me to dance.

  Agatha’s already there, sitting on a metal bench at the metal table, her head bowed over a bowl of hot porridge. When she looks up I say, meanly, “You can pray all you want, it’ll still be porridge.”

  “I like porridge.” Agatha picks up her spoon and smiles through the steam rising from the bowl. She’s been sickeningly nice to me since the day of the transcast.

  “If you spent as much time studying...” I let the sentence hang while I give my order to the wall dispenser. She knows how hopeless she still is in Malemese.

  I drink my juice, trying to decide what fruit it’s supposed to taste like, and carry the rest of my meal to the table. “Describe what we’re eating,” I suggest as I sit down.

  Agatha gets a cornered look on her face, which annoys me. I push my protein patty around on my plate as she stumbles through two sentences. I don’t know which is worse, the food on ship or having to listen to Agatha mangle Malemese grammar. I’m losing a semester of education for this? I want to scream.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Agatha complains the third time I correct her grammar.

  “It will, when you know it well enough to think in it,” I tell her with a confidence I no longer feel. “Languages only make sense from the inside.”

  “Oh! Like people.”

  “People don’t make sense at all.”

  Agatha smiles. “They do from the inside.”

  I grind the patty into my plate. She’s changed the subject again. All she has to do is learn one language. That’s all. One. And if she doesn’t learn it by the time we get there, I’m stuck by my agreement to stay with her and interpret till she does.

  “You,” I snap.

  Agatha groans.

  “Tell me.”

  “There are four separate words all meaning ‘you’. One is used between spouses,” she ticks them off on her fingers. “Another is for family members and close friends. The third is for everyone else who is Malemese and the last is for non-Malemese. I wonder why they have that distinction? They don’t see many off-worlders.”

  “Languages change. Their ancestors used the fourth ‘you’ for strangers, people from other villages. But there’s so little habitable land on Malem that eventually the villages merged into one city. The fourth ‘you’ almost disappeared from the language, until off-worlders began to come.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  I did some research, I think. Didn’t it occur to her to learn something about the place she’s going? Like that it’s a cold, wet world, the opposite of Seraffa’s semi-arid desert. I packed my warmest jumpsuits but I only have two—it seldom gets cool enough on Seraffa for long sleeves. And that there’s only one continent surrounded by water, and no natural life-forms on the land. Everything—plants, animals, birds—was brought there with the colonists over a century ago. She could have learned that much, at least, but there’s no use saying it now.

  “I helped a couple of Malemese at an Immigration Investigation. They went to work on a farm and I visited them a couple times.”

  “They emigrated? I thought the Malemese never emigrated?”

  “They wouldn’t talk about it. Not even at the Investigation. They were almost turned down because they wouldn’t give a reason for wanting to emigrate, but in the end there were no real grounds to refuse them.”

  “What were they like?”

  “Reserved. Very religious.”

  Agatha smiled.

  “It isn’t the same religion as the O.U.B.,” I warn her.

  “It’s all the same God.”

  “Is that what the Adept thinks?”

  For the first time Agatha brings the subject back to language lessons. “Each of
the four ‘yous’ has three declensions plus singular or plural, and can be masculine or feminine depending on the final letter. You forgot to ask me that.”

  “And?”

  “And?”

  “And each one must be said with the proper inflection to indicate the power differential.”

  “The power differential?” Agatha’s little frown appears.

  “It’s about respect. Who’s due it from whom. Older from younger, say, or royalty from commoner. It’s very important.”

  “What if I get it wrong?”

  “Don’t. It’s an FTA—a face threatening act.” Even without linguistics, Agatha should understand that concept. It must be part of their training in reading expressions. “The rules of courtesy are very strict on Malem. For example, in order to request something of someone else, the speaker must have more authority than the person he or she asks.”

  “Will I be able to ask questions?”

  “Questions, yes. Favors, no. Until you establish your own authority.”

  “How would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. Very carefully, I think.”

  Agatha is quiet, considering it.

  “How many languages do you know?” Maybe I can show her similarities between the grammatical structures. I only half-listen for her answer. What I’m really waiting for is an opportunity to ask about Malemese diamonds. But it has to come naturally.

  “ Tw o .”

  “Two?” It takes me a moment to remember my question. “Two? I thought the Select were taught languages?”

  “I had so much trouble with Central Ang they didn’t give me another.”

  “You had trouble with Central Ang?” I stare at her, till I realize my mouth is open, and shut it.

  Central Ang was developed for interplanetary use. It’s stripped of all complexity in order to make it accessible to everyone. There are no irregularities in its verbs, its nouns, its formation of plurals and possessives; no declensions; no synonyms; no multiple spellings or pronunciations. Its vocabulary is limited to the essentials necessary for tongue-tied tourists and cybermail—and that’s all it’s good for. It doesn’t have the complexity needed to exchange ideas, or the subtlety required in negotiations, or the warmth and humor that create friendship. But at some fundamental human level where the fear of not being understood touches us all, Central Ang ties the human universe together.

  “You can speak Central Ang?” I ask, in Central Ang.

  “Yes I can,” Agatha replies in the same language.

  “And Edoan.” I revert back to the language we’ve always spoken together.

  “Edoan is my mother tongue. I was brought to Seraffa as a child.”

  “What about your parents’ language?”

  “I never knew my parents. They died when I was very young. My father was an Adept, so I was raised in the Order.”

  “That’s it? Edoan and Central Ang?”

  She looks at me without blinking. The O.U.B. do not repeat themselves; they expect you to listen the first time.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t learn languages before I agreed to teach you?”

  “Because I can. I did learn Central Ang,” she says, breaking their rule about repeating.

  She means it. At least she appears to—she is a Select.

  I stand up, avoiding her eyes. “Work on your vocab. I’m going to work on my...my Kandaran...I brought it with me...” I’m babbling, and Agatha can’t help seeing it. Just get out, I think. Out of here, now. “We’ll meet later. After supper....”

  The door slides shut behind me. No one can see me but still I hold myself back, the sound of my footfalls on the metal floor even and casual, all the way to my room. Agatha might not know the extent of her linguistic incompetence—hard as that is to believe—but the Adept did. She had to have.

  I’m not here to teach Agatha Malemese.

  Why am I here?

  Chapter Eleven

  Balancing my fork on one prong, I give it a quick twist. It twirls in a brief moment of gracefulness then wobbles and falls noisily onto the table. I lift it, balance and spin it again.

  Where is Agatha? She was supposed to meet me here an hour ago for her language lesson. In a week we’ll reach Malem and she still can’t say a single sentence without making some cultural-linguistic gaffe.

  We’ve kept up the pretense—at least I have, because the alternative terrifies me—that I’m here to teach her Malemese. And that’s what I mean to do, as best I can. That’s all I mean to do. Whatever else the Adept has in mind, whatever was in that dream she mentioned, she can forget it.

  But teaching Agatha is impossible. “They’ll know what I mean,” she says when I correct her, as if language isn’t even necessary.

  I give the fork a savage twist. It spins wildly to the edge of the table and clatters onto the floor. Where is she? I grab my plate and cup, retrieve the fork, slam them all into the slot for used dishes, and stomp down the narrow, claustrophobic corridor to find her.

  The vibration of the ship has seeped into me; I can feel my blood vibrating in time to the engines’ beat as it cycles through my body. I can’t wait to get out of this spaceship! I’m desperate to feel the sun on my face and the wind in my hair again. I curl my toes, imagining the warmth of living soil under them, solid and still. But it’s Seraffa I’m imagining and Malem I’ll be stepping out onto in one week’s time.

  Not for long, I reassure myself. I’ll be leaving when the ship leaves. I asked the captain if I could stay shipside but he’s turning off the engines: no power, no lights, no air circulation. I’ve been vaccinated, there’s nothing to fear, I remind myself for the hundredth time.

  Agatha isn’t in her room so I head for the com room and there she is, standing in front of the portal, her eyes shining and her hands clasped together in prayer. Her lips are moving, murmuring something too low for me to catch. It reminds me of the time just before I left home when I came upon my mother talking to a holo of my father. As if the dead could be reached through their effects. Only the living are reachable, until it’s too late.

  I clear my throat. Agatha gives no sign of hearing me. I cough. It’s a little forced but unmistakably audible. No response. I think of the Adept’s stare and throw myself into it...

  Apparently, I haven’t mastered that trick.

  “Select Agatha, I was hired to teach you Malemese.” I pronounce each word distinctly. “By your Adept,” I add desperately. Is she aware, as I am, that she will not learn Malemese in the next week? Does she think I’ve failed, or... or does she know I’ve been sent here for some other reason? I think of my father’s fever, and then of his diamond in its leather pouch, hidden under the mattress in my room, and I feel myself sweating.

  “Come to the portal,” Agatha says. “You can see Iterria.”

  Iterria, viewed through the portal, looks huge. It’s the only other habitable planet around Malem’s sun, and it blocks them both out, casting a reddish glow in the dark of space.

  “What’s it like?” I should have researched Malem’s solar system as well.

  “It’s very hot, a desert planet. They harvest the few precious clouds that form over the mountains at night, for water. It’s not enough, though, to support the present population. Without another water supply, their civilization could die.”

  At least we have water on Seraffa. I look at her, reevaluating. She has done some research. “Why don’t they take hydrogen from the stars?”

  “Iterria’s oxygen is very thin, not up to the task of converting the hydrogen into water. Besides, there aren’t any large stars close enough to make that practical.”

  “What about a comet?”

  “There’s no oort cloud near this solar system.”

  I’m beginning to get the picture. “Malem is mostly water.”

  Agatha nods. “Iterria wants to buy enough of Malem’s water to create a closed, self-replenishing system on Iterria. Malem could easily spare it.”

  The cost of
lifting that much water off a planet staggers me. “How would they do it?”

  “Iterria and Malem are small, low-g planets with stable orbits. They’re both suitable for skyhook towers. Iterria already has one; they want to build another on Malem.”

  “And send water up and down the elevators. The only transport they’d need would be between the satellites, in space.”

  Agatha nods again.

  “Iterria must be rich.” I look out at the glowing planet.

  “Rich, and desperate.”

  “Why not just land on an uninhabited part of Malem and take the water they need?” As soon as I say it, I wish I could take it back. There is no uninhabited part of Malem. With only one continent, every bit of land is precious. Agatha doesn’t answer. She’s probably stuck on the “just take what you need” part. I look out the portal.

  That’s that, then. Inter-planetary strife is left up to each world to settle on its own, but intra-planetary aggression is forbidden. If Iterria attacks Malem for water, they’ll be fighting the entire Alliance.

  “They need a trade agreement,” Agatha says. “It would be a good solution. Iterria’s a technological world, they have a lot to offer Malem.”

  “But Malem doesn’t want it.”

  “No.”

  “And you’re supposed to make them want Iterria’s technology?”

  “I’m supposed to try to bring them into the Alliance.”

  “They don’t want that either.” I’m guessing, but it fits what I saw of the couple I translated for: reserved and self-sufficient. “How are you supposed to get them to join?”

  Agatha’s anxious frown reappears. “I don’t know. I only know the problem, not the solution. This is my first posting.”

  “You haven’t been given instructions?”

  “Not yet.” Agatha looks out at Iterria. Her face clears. “I will be told in time.”

  “Aren’t they cutting it a little close? Malem isn’t on the cyber link.”