“That’s awful,” I said, wondering what response he was expecting.
“She’s fine, obviously, and some sick asshole in Chicago knows a little more about ranshai than he did before. I think that about covers it.”
I let out a cautious breath. “No dealbreakers, then.”
“You tell me,” he said, his gaze steady on mine.
“The Flare, you mean?” When he nodded, I said, “It was . . . horrific. But it’s not the truth of who they are. It’s not a dealbreaker.”
“Then you better call it in, Alcott, because nobody on our side knows what to think. The Vardeshi are falling over themselves trying to convince the Council that they didn’t put the brightest star of the exchange program in the hands of a human-hater. Again.”
“They didn’t,” I said firmly, ignoring the accolade. I’d heard plenty of that kind of talk from Kylie, and I knew the surest way to prolong the teasing was to challenge it.
“You sound pretty sure about that.”
“I have good reason to be.”
“How good?”
“You know how we say actions speak louder than words? Well, so do thoughts.”
Fletcher stared at me. “Don’t tell me you did another Listening.”
“I did.”
“You know they’re still forbidden, right?”
“I had to be sure I was safe.” I was pleased at how smoothly the words came out. They were partly true, in any case.
“I think I’m starting to understand why you’ve been dragging your feet on calling home,” he said with grim humor. “On that note, I’m under orders to put you in front of a camera within twenty-four hours of making contact, with or without your consent. So it would save me a lot of trouble if you’d message Earth tonight when you get back to your room.” Seeing my resistance to the idea, he added gently, “People are worried about you. And not just the Council. There’s a lot of chatter among the Strangers. You’re kind of an icon for us. Knowing you’re safe is going to make a lot of people feel safer.”
“I didn’t think of that,” I admitted.
“I find it’s getting harder to think clearly after being alone for so long. And I haven’t been put through the wringer like you have. I think they should send us out in pairs next time.”
“Next time,” I echoed.
“Consensus among the Strangers is that the alliance will go forward. The Azimuth’s crew thinks so too. What are they saying on the Ascendant?”
“The same.”
“Well, there’s another reason for you to phone home sooner rather than later.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Remember, you don’t just work for the Fleet. You work for Earth too. And if you ever want to be allowed offworld again, you need to show the Council you can meet their expectations even under stress. Regular check-ins are part of the job description.”
“They’re bringing me home,” I said. “I figured they were grounding me for good.”
Fletcher shook his head. “I wouldn’t make that assumption. You’re too valuable. If they can verify that you’re not broken, they’ll send you out again.”
“I’m not broken,” I said.
“They don’t know that.”
“All right, you’ve made your point. I’ll send a message.” I got up and began stacking dishes together. He waved me away. “Let me handle the cleanup. Before you go, though, there’s one thing I have to say, and you’re not going to like it. I’m hoping I’ve won you over enough tonight that you won’t hate me.”
“How could I hate someone who gave me chocolate?”
“That was a calculated move, as you’ll see.” He spoke casually, but his eyes were serious.
Unnerved, I asked, “What is it?”
Fletcher said quietly, “I launch in a week for Vardesh Prime.”
At first I couldn’t make any sense of the words. I looked at him incredulously. “What?”
“They’re sending me to Vardesh Prime.”
“Oh,” I said in a small voice.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s . . .” I waved a hand. “It’s fine. I knew . . . I should have known. I was warned. Well, congratulations. I guess you’re number one on the List now.”
“That’s not how I see it.”
“Whatever. Thanks for the food.” I bolted for the door. He made no move to stop me.
I walked in a daze down the narrow ramp to the common area where I’d left my duffel bag. I retrieved it, went into one of the single bedrooms I’d noticed on my tour, and closed the door behind me. Why had I been so naïve as to assume that, if the Council wasn’t sending me to Vardesh Prime, they weren’t sending anyone? Fletcher was intact. He hadn’t sustained unacceptable levels of physical and emotional trauma. He hadn’t blown off a month of transmissions from Earth. He hadn’t been ostracized, shot, or assaulted. He hadn’t exposed his mind to the unknowable stresses of telepathy on not one but two separate occasions. He had spent five calm and predictable months aboard the Azimuth and a calm and predictable month on Elteni Starhaven. And now he was going to Vardesh Prime. Not after me. Not with me. Instead of me.
* * *
When I awakened nearly twelve hours later, my first thought was that I’d forgotten to record my video message for the Council. My second was that Fletcher Simon was going to Vardesh Prime in my place. I dragged myself through a shower, dressed, and settled on my bed to record my long-postponed transmission. I began my transmission with an apology for my delinquency in not reporting in before now. With quick, broad strokes I laid out the events of the Flare and the succeeding weeks. I left nothing out, not the flashbacks nor the second Listening, for which I offered the same justification I’d given Fletcher. I assured the Council that the Vardeshi had been accurate in their description of the Flare and that it was not, despite appearances, indicative of latent aggression and hostility. I finished with a caustic critique of what passed for hospitality on Elteni. I seeded the entire recording liberally with covert signals confirming the truth of my words.
After assuring myself that the message had been sent successfully, I went to find something to eat. I moved through the common areas with trepidation at first, relaxing when it became clear that Fletcher was either sleeping or absent. Perhaps he had recognized the better part of valor and gone exploring elsewhere in the starhaven. If so, I applauded his wisdom. In the galley I found a plate of freshly baked muffins—how had he managed to bake anything with the equipment on hand?—conspicuously placed beside a carafe of coffee on the long table. He’s trying to win me over with food again, I thought in some irritation, and then, grudgingly, It’s working.
By the time I’d finished eating, I had reached the conclusion that I didn’t resent Fletcher nearly as much as I missed him. After all, it wasn’t his fault that the Vardeshi had chosen him to replace me. And, barring any unforeseen stops on the way home, it would be five long months before I saw another human. What could I accomplish by avoiding him except to punish myself unnecessarily for a situation neither of us could control? Besides, I had had more than three weeks to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to Vardesh Prime. Now that the initial sting of Fletcher’s revelation had passed, I found myself able to take a reasonably impartial view of the situation. He had come as far as I had. He had learned a new language. He deserved to go. But, I promised myself, if he gloated even once about his last-minute promotion, I’d measure out exactly ten months of our combined food supply and vent the rest into space, dooming us both to an express trip home. I knew how to identify an airlock now. I knew how to open one too.
He didn’t gloat. When I messaged him, asking if he was free to give me a tour of the starhaven, his response was immediate and affirmative. Five minutes later, he joined me in our de facto mess hall. “I’m glad you texted me,” he said at once, sitting down beside me and helping himself to the last of the coffee. “I would have done it, but I thought you might, how shall I put this, need some space?”
“It’s yours. And, Avery, for what it’s worth . . .” He waited for me to look at him before continuing. “I’m not going to say I envy you, because that would be incredibly callous after what you’ve been through. But I’ve been out here almost as long as you have, and no one’s asked me to wear a uniform, let alone mind-meld with them. Did you ever go to Disney World as a kid?”
Perplexed, I nodded.
“Good. Then you’ll know what I mean when I say that you’re riding Space Mountain, and the rest of us are still dicking around on It’s a Small World.”
“Yeah, well, I admit it’s been a while, but I don’t remember having to switch cars on Space Mountain because my first one exploded halfway through. Or being turned back right before the end.”
“And with all that,” Fletcher said firmly, “it’s still a better ride.”
Unwillingly I laughed.
We spent the next few hours wandering around Elteni, inasmuch as it was possible to wander while politely hemmed in by our combined force of eight security guards. It wasn’t, I had to concede, as repellent a place as I’d initially thought, but its chief attraction in my eyes was Fletcher himself. He was sublime company. I knew the counterfeit intimacy of like-minded strangers thrown together in unusual circumstances, but this was something more. We shared a fascination with language and wordplay in both English and Vardeshi. He was intensely jealous of my stock of borrowed idioms. I was secretly relieved that there was one linguistic arena in which I was able to best him, even if accessing someone else’s lexicon should rightly be considered cheating. I had watched the accelerated progression of my language skills in Hathan’s memories. I knew my Vardeshi was good. Fletcher’s was better. I would have resented him for it if he had betrayed the slightest hint of either smugness or false self-deprecation, but he was entirely matter-of-fact about his fluency. I accepted my defeat with good grace, sharing in the laughter when he called a senek vendor out on a provincial accent too subtle for me to hear, let alone place. It wasn’t until I heard him trading what I assumed to be jovial insults with a pack of young men in Fleet uniforms that I let my irritation show. “Oh, come on! Standard Vardeshi wasn’t enough for you? You had to learn the North Continent dialect too?”
“It’s as good a way as any to set myself apart from the competition.”
“What competition?”
He gave me a sidelong glance, then said with disarming frankness, “You, for one.”
“Well, you’re going to the planet, so it must have worked.”
“I’m going as your understudy. For two weeks. Next time I want to go for months, if not years. And I want to be the one they ask for, not the consolation prize.”
“That’s the second time you’ve brought up your next mission. You’re already planning for it.” I shook my head. “I can barely think about tomorrow.”
“Like I said,” he said lightly, “you’ve been on a different ride.”
For the most part we were treated with either kindness or neutral courtesy by vendors and passers-by alike. At one point, however, Fletcher took my elbow and guided me gently onward when I would have stopped at a jewelry vendor. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You didn’t see the sign?”
“I saw it. It’s a nice name.” The sign bore the name of the shop, Shards of Starlight, in stylized gold script on an indigo background. It had caught my attention because the phrase reminded me of the transmission with which the Vardeshi had reopened contact with Earth. Bright shards of yourselves, they had said, referring to the fragments of radio and video communication they had intercepted from Earth over the years, the glimpses of our identity that had first piqued their curiosity about us.
“Not the name,” Fletcher said. “The symbol in the corner.”
I looked back over my shoulder. In the lower right-hand corner of the sign was another symbol, a small glyph I didn’t recognize, also printed in gold. “What is that?” I asked.
“It represents purity. It means they’re anti-alliance. It’s the third or fourth one I’ve seen today.”
“Anti-alliance?” I echoed in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“You didn’t see them on Arkhati?” Fletcher sounded equally surprised.
Rathis murmured, “Fringe starhavens tend to be more liberal in their politics. And, given Arkhati’s proximity to Earth, the symbols may not catch on there at all.”
“I hope not,” I said, shaken.
Fletcher nudged me onward. “Come on. It’s not a big deal. The alliance isn’t universally popular on either side. That’s not new information. Unless the movement gains enough traction to impact policy, which it won’t, all they’re doing is advertising their bigotry. Right?” He looked to Rathis for support.
“Yes,” Rathis said. “And you should expect to see more of it. The consensus is that the trial year is proceeding well. Anti-alliance groups on both sides are likely to escalate their tactics out of desperation as the experiment draws to a close.”
Fletcher nudged me with his elbow. “Get it? Because we’re winning.”
I had to smile. “Okay, okay, you’ve made your point.”
As we walked on, I tried to let the conviction I’d heard in his and Rathis’ voices carry me past my unease. But I couldn’t resist checking the corners of each sign we passed. To my relief, I spotted only two more of the purity glyphs. I avoided the eyes of the vendors running those shops. It might be only politics, and not intended to be personal. But I was one of only two humans on Elteni, and it felt awfully personal to me.
As the day unfolded, I had the same sense I’d had with Kylie of being pulled gently but insistently back into myself. Was it even possible, I wondered, to preserve the integrity of one’s identity when surrounded by members of another species? Was I, after six months among the Vardeshi, ever so slightly less human? Maybe Fletcher had been right about the wisdom of sending us out in pairs next time. Maybe we needed to see our own humanity mirrored back to us by others in order to maintain our grip on it. I remembered the fears I’d had on Arkhati about Stockholm syndrome and going native. I hadn’t thought in those terms in months. Was the omission meaningful in itself? Exactly how far out of myself had I gone? Remembering the peculiar sensation of settling back into my own body after the Listening with Hathan, I knew it was a long way.
By the end of the afternoon, I knew I liked Fletcher. I also knew—and in my mind the two facts were distinct—that I was attracted to him. After months of wrestling with my half-guilty fixation on Hathan, it was almost a relief to feel the clean, straightforward pull of desire. I had collected a handful of ex-boyfriends over the years. None of them had ever drawn me so forcefully. Was it something about Fletcher himself, I wondered, or was it only that I was emerging from what was essentially a six-month-long signal shadow? I knew that male and female bodies communicated in ways we only dimly understood, that an intricate dance of pheromones and subtle kinetic cues took place beneath and around any verbal interaction. I had never known that silent communication to be so powerful. Every time Fletcher spoke to me, every time our eyes met, I felt a giddy rush of heat. With every seemingly incidental brush of his arm against mine, I breathed in the commingled scents of Earth soap and deodorant warmed by his skin. When he left his jacket on a stool, I wanted to grab it up and bury my face in the fabric. His presence made me edgy, restless, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to move toward him or away. Both at once, maybe.
Whichever one I chose, I was fairly certain that the decision fell to me. From what I understood of the male libido, a young heterosexual man, celibate now for six months at minimum, was unlikely to turn down a brief casual liaison if one offered itself. I didn’t think I was overestimating my personal charms to conclude that Fletcher was
mine if I wanted him. So, I asked myself as I watched him making effortless small talk with another vendor, did I want him? I wasn’t sure. I felt an odd compulsion to see him interacting with Hathan. In my mind there was no contradiction between the simple desire I felt for one of them and the love, with its attendant longing, that I felt for the other. But I couldn’t interpret either feeling in isolation. I needed to put them into context, and there was no way to do that except to see the two men together.
Later that night I did. After a last draining cross-examination by another joint panel of Fleet and Echelon investigators, I was finishing up a leisurely dinner with Fletcher when I received a message from Sohra. Some of the Ascendant’s crew were meeting for drinks later, she said, and named the time and the bar. Fletcher had already suggested a quiet night in the Green Zone, our name for the humans-only section of the starhaven, with a bottle of wine and a movie. When I relayed the content of the message, however, he said decisively, “Let’s go out. I want to meet these crewmates of yours.”
A little later we made our way down to Elteni’s bar level. I could have wished our security escort were a bit less efficient; my memories of Downhelix were still fresh, and I would have enjoyed wandering around looking for the place we wanted. On our way we passed one establishment whose purple gloom I recognized from Arkhati. I pointed it out to Fletcher, who had never heard of a rana club. Officer Rathis pointed out the sign for the Supernova farther down on the same side. Inside, I found my crewmates without difficulty thanks to Reyna’s distinctive uniform. Fletcher introduced himself, and I watched with a mixture of envy and proprietary pride as their eyes widened at the authenticity of his accent. Hathan arrived shortly after us.
“Ah,” he said as he sat down. “This must be the second most qualified representative of humanity.”
Bright Shards (The Vardeshi Saga Book 2) Page 24
