Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book 1)

by Meg Pechenick

  Because the crew were between meals, the mess hall was deserted. I cooked an elaborate brunch—coffee, orange juice, toast, hash and eggs, granola and dried fruit—and took my time over it. Then I cleaned my dishes and workspace, made more coffee, and carried it and a book to the lounge. The rest of my day off passed swiftly by. I read, worked out, took another blissful shower, and spent a desultory hour drafting my report for Earth. I ate a leisurely dinner—alone, again, because I’d misread the clock in my quarters—and then decided to make my way to the lounge and see how my companions were occupying themselves. I’d heard mention of an event taking place there tonight, but that much was drawn from an overheard fragment of conversation between Ziral and Khiva in the corridor, and I hadn’t caught any details.

  When I stepped into the lounge, an unexpected sight met my eyes. What looked like all the members of the Pinion’s crew were kneeling in a circle around Ziral, who was seated on a stool. All of them, including Ziral, had their eyes closed. Ziral was speaking—I could hear the murmur of her voice from the doorway, but couldn’t make out any of the words—and the others appeared to be listening intently. The preternatural calm on their faces was like nothing I had ever seen. They seemed to be in a trance. No one stirred or shifted. The stillness in the room was absolute. My gaze traveled slowly from one tranquil face to the next, lingering longest on Hathan, who looked startlingly young in repose. I had no idea what I was witnessing, but I was instantly certain I had violated some deeply private—and deeply alien—ritual. The sense of transgression was overpowering. Whatever this was, I wasn’t meant to see it. I backed slowly toward the door. When I touched the control, it opened with a hiss that seemed impossibly loud, but none of the assembled Vardeshi responded in any way to the noise. I wondered if they were even conscious.

  Safely out in the hallway, I hesitated. What had I walked into? I would have to ask Zey for an explanation tomorrow. For tonight, the lounge was clearly off-limits to me, and I didn’t want to go back to my quarters just yet. I decided to go back to the mess hall. I had been there for twenty minutes or so, sitting alone at one of the tables with my e-reader and a cup of tea, when the door hissed open. Startled, I looked up. I'd assumed that all my shipmates would be absorbed in—whatever it was—for a while yet.

  It was Zey. He looked equally startled to see me. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I went to hang out in the lounge, but . . . something weird is happening. I didn’t feel right being there.”

  “The Listening,” he said. “I should have warned you.”

  “The Listening?” Something about the way he said it implied the capital letter.

  “Yeah. Someone tells a story and everyone else Listens.”

  “And that’s it? Just storytelling? It looked pretty . . . intense.” In my mind I saw again those rapt, still faces.

  “That’s because of rana. It enhances the story. Makes it more real.”

  “Rana?” I felt more confused than ever.

  “Remember the senek ritual? The black jar, the one I told you not to use? That’s rana.”

  “It’s a drug?”

  “A powerful one,” Zey confirmed. “A tiny amount is enough to make people—most people—feel as if they are living through someone else’s story, instead of just hearing it.”

  “It makes you hallucinate?”

  Zey smiled. “No. What you see on rana isn’t a hallucination. It’s real. The function of the drug is to allow two different minds to connect. Not perfectly, and not for very long, but enough to share memories.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “Are you saying that rana . . . amplifies empathy?”

  “Not empathy,” Zey said. “Telepathy.”

  We stared at each other. I knew Zey’s facial expressions well enough by now to know that he was entirely in earnest. “Telepathy,” I said slowly. “You’re telling me your people have telepathic abilities. You can communicate via thought.”

  “Most people can only do it with the help of rana. And like I said, it doesn’t work all that well. Or at all, sometimes.” He gestured to himself. “There’s a reason why I’m not in the lounge with the others. Rana doesn’t work on me at all. I don’t know if it’s because I’m missing a piece that everyone else has, or if the drug doesn’t work with my body chemistry, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t touch me. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out, and it doesn’t matter how much rana I take. I’m a Blank.”

  “A Blank,” I repeated.

  “That’s what we call someone with no telepathic abilities.”

  “Is that rare?”

  “It’s not common. It’s estimated that less than five percent of the population are Blanks. And there are about an equal number of Voxes.”

  “Okay, you lost me again. What’s a Vox?”

  “The opposite of a Blank. Someone who doesn’t need rana to share thoughts. Their abilities are fully under their control—they can access them at will. And they’re incredibly powerful. A connection with a Vox is a hundred times clearer than one created by rana. Or so everyone says. I wouldn’t know. Even the most gifted Vox can’t join minds with a Blank. And believe me, we’ve tried. If Saresh can’t do it, no one can.”

  I said, “Saresh?”

  Zey nodded. “He’s a Vox. And a strong one, although he doesn’t like to admit it. Too modest.”

  I was still trying to process what he was telling me. “A Blank and a Vox in the same family?”

  “Actually, it’s more common than not. The extreme ends of the spectrum tend to cluster together. There’s speculation that the same genetic marker that’s activated to create a Vox will produce a Blank when the switch is flipped the other way.”

  Thinking furiously, I said, “So then, if these things run in families, what about Hathan?”

  “Hathan is right in the middle of the spectrum. Completely ordinary. Latent abilities activated by rana.”

  “And what about the rest of the crew? Any other Voxes? Or Blanks?”

  Zey shook his head. “Just Saresh and me.”

  I pictured again the silently gathered crew. “So right now, in the lounge . . . What’s happening? What are they doing?”

  “Ziral is telling a story, and the others are Listening. Sharing the memory—experiencing it through her eyes. Everyone took rana with their evening senek. Well, everyone but Saresh.”

  “So the Listening is . . . a social activity? A form of recreation?”

  “It’s our primary form of entertainment.”

  And you’re excluded from it, I thought. “Okay, let me see if I’ve got this right. You’re telling me that on average, out of every twenty Vardeshi, nineteen are to some extent telepathic?”

  “That’s right,” said Zey.

  “How has this never come up before?” I said in disbelief.

  “Why, is it important?”

  “Are you kidding? On Earth, telepathy is a myth. A fantasy. We’ve imagined it, but we’ve never been able to prove that it’s possible. But apparently for your people it’s not only possible, it’s commonplace.” I paused and looked at him closely. “Unless you’re just messing with me again.”

  “I swear I’m not.” He gestured to the empty mess hall. “Why else would I be here, alone, when everyone else is in the lounge?”

  “Fair enough,” I conceded.

  “Are there really no telepaths on Earth? None at all?” I thought I heard a note of longing in his voice.

  “Not one. It’s a whole planet full of Blanks.”

  “A whole planet of Blanks,” he repeated. “I knew there was something I liked about you.”

  “Other than my rank, you mean?”

  “Other than that.”

  I stirred my tea pensively. “So what do you do when everyone else is at the Listening?”

  Zey made a wry face. “Mostly I get really, really bored.”

  “Isn’t that kind of unfair?”

  “It doesn’t often happen like this. Most ships
will have at least a handful of Blanks. The Fleet makes sure of that. Originally there was another Blank assigned to the Pinion, but she was replaced at the last minute. By Saresh.”

  “Ironic,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I’d rather have my brother on the mission than a stranger. Even if she was a Blank.”

  “Well,” I said, “I know we already spend all day together, so I won’t be offended if you’d like some time alone. But if you want company, we could . . . I don’t know . . . play cards or something. Humans have all kinds of ways to pass the time that don’t involve being able to hear someone else’s thoughts.”

  “Cards?” Zey said curiously.

  “It’s a game. A lot of games, actually. Wait here, I’ve got some in my quarters. You’ll like them, I promise.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The second four-day cycle passed as swiftly as the first. By the end of the first week, I had begun to shoulder some novi duties on my own. The increased responsibility brought with it a few tense moments. I tried to remind myself that mistakes were inevitable, and at least the ones I made were relatively minor. I touched the wrong control in the galley and put the cleansing machines into an extended cycle, leaving Ahnir without enough clean dishes for the noon meal. I mistook cleaning solvent for detergent and ruined a dozen uniforms. I misread the byzantine Vardeshi clock and missed half of an evening briefing. I unknowingly selected a group-text option on my flexscreen and spent two mortifying hours sending error-strewn replies to the entire crew before Zey stopped laughing long enough to enlighten me. I brewed senek that was too weak and too strong and, bewilderingly, too cold. Most damningly of all, in my eyes, I made one linguistic error after another. I flubbed word endings and verb tenses and tones. When these mistakes were pointed out to me—which they were, frequently and patronizingly—I swallowed hard and repeated the correction, trying to fix it in my memory, then went back to my quarters and cried. I wasn’t used to feeling like the slowest student in the class. I hated it.

  For no reason I could name, I dreaded most the corrections that came from Hathan. He wasn’t one of the patronizing ones. He didn’t gloat, as Vethna did, visibly, as though each error of mine gave him personal satisfaction. He simply noted the incorrect form and offered the correct one in a tone that was unvaryingly patient. Saresh and Khiva and Ziral did precisely the same thing, in precisely the same manner, half a dozen times a day. Their comments, though, didn’t cause my face to burn with humiliation. I couldn’t understand it. The only explanation I could find that was even halfway satisfying was that Hathan had argued against my being selected to join the Pinion’s crew, and Vekesh had overruled him on account of my language skills. Every error I made in Hathan’s presence felt like a tiny weight added to his side of the scale. I had been chosen over the other candidates because I spoke Vardeshi. If I couldn’t even do that, then I didn’t deserve to be here.

  By the end of that week I had begun to form a general opinion of each of the members of the Pinion’s crew. In most cases, my first impression had proven to be a fair representation. Vethna was unquestionably my least favorite. Always the first to point out a mistake—linguistic or otherwise—and the last to offer a useful answer to a question, he made it clear that he had no patience for my unfamiliarity with Vardeshi culture and customs. Our forced proximity as lower-ranking crew members sharing a mess table was unfortunate. I avoided or ignored him whenever I could, but sometimes this simply wasn’t possible. During one breakfast I was telling Sohra how courtships worked on Earth—she had been dismayed to learn that I wasn’t yet betrothed—when he cut in with, “Typical human stupidity.”

  It was the third such comment in the last day. Giving in to my exasperation, I snapped, “Who are you to comment on typical human anything?”

  “Excuse me?” he said coldly.

  “I’m just observing that you’ve never shown much interest in our way of life. You’re not exactly an expert on humanity.”

  “I know as much as I care to. Novi.”

  I felt a stab of pain as, unseen beneath the table, Zey’s foot connected with my ankle. “If that’s true, then why are you even here? Why take part in the exchange at all?”

  “Maybe I was giving you a chance to prove me wrong. Which—let me be clear—you haven’t.”

  “It’s kind of hard to prove anything when you won’t let me finish a sentence,” I shot back.

  “That’s enough, Novi,” said Ziral, who’d arrived with her tray early on in our exchange. “Your tone is impertinent. You owe Rhevi Vethna an apology.”

  I looked at Zey, who nodded slightly, his eyes on his plate. “I will endeavor to be more satisfactory,” I said tightly. This sentence, which I viewed as irritatingly penitent and self-effacing, was the one Zey claimed Khavi Vekesh—and, by extension, everyone else—favored for formal apologies. I’d already had cause to use it several times that week. It grated a little more with each repetition.

  I thought my display of contrition had ended our skirmish, but the last word went to Vethna, who murmured, “I should hope so.”

  I didn’t know what to think of Ziral. If she disliked me, or humans, or humans trying to do Vardeshi work, she hid it better than Vethna. But our conversations never achieved any real depth. While she was polite, she was also dismissive. I had the sense that she saw me as a minor but persistent irritation which she was dutifully trying to ignore. I placed her and Khavi Vekesh in the same category. Along with the injunction to speak no English until my Vardeshi had reached some wholly subjective standard of his own designing, he had spoken to me in that first week only to tell me that the morning senek was too weak and that Suvi Takheri’s water glass needed filling at officers’ dinner. I hadn’t forgotten Zey’s assertion that he was equally terse with everyone, and it was true that I had seen him speak critically to a few other crew members as well. I still didn’t think he liked me.

  Ahnir was another one whose attitude toward humans seemed to oscillate between neutral and negative. Because we shared space in the galley during meal preparation times, I found myself in closer physical proximity to him than to anyone else save Zey. He watched me closely and made no attempt to disguise his opinion of my conduct. I knew when I annoyed him, which was frequently: by selecting the wrong cycle on the cleansing machines, by taking up too much workspace with my food preparation, or by making something he didn’t find appetizing. The transparency of his reactions was useful when it came to gauging how my food would be received by the other crew members. I found the Vardeshi response to the odors of Earth food impossible to predict. Ahnir didn’t object to tuna or garlicky pesto, and he hovered over my Pad Thai for so long I almost offered him my fork. The main offenders were breakfast foods: toast, coffee, and especially bacon. I put the bacon away and unpacked my oatmeal, but I kept making coffee. My commitment to interspecies harmony had its limits.

  Khiva, too, seemed undecided about humans, but I thought I could like her, given the chance. There was a directness about her that reminded me a little of Kylie. One morning I was in the galley cleaning my dishes when she and Ziral came in to deposit their trays. I heard Khiva ask who was scheduled to do the next Listening. “Sohra,” I said without thinking; I’d been looking at the next week’s schedule a few minutes before. Ziral looked taken aback, but Khiva laughed. “Well done, Novi. We’ll have to start watching what we say around you.” Of course, later on I heard her laughing with Vethna about my unintentional group messages, but I didn’t think there had been any malice there. Not on her side, at least.

  I did count a few tentative allies among my crewmates. Daskar and Sohra were two of these. I saw glimmers of interest and kindness—guarded, but nonetheless there—in my interactions with them. I sensed that my predicament as a young woman alone among strangers engaged Daskar’s maternal instincts. Furthermore, her role as ship’s doctor demanded that she keep a close eye on me. At some point during each day she pulled me aside to assess my appetite, quality of sleep, and general well-being.
I recognized these as the diagnostic questions they were, but it felt good to be looked after. Sohra was unfailingly patient with my interminable computer questions, and she welcomed my halting attempts at mealtime conversation. On more than one occasion she evinced real curiosity about my life on Earth. I didn’t know how she and Daskar had come to be on this mission together, but as I pictured it, Sohra had leapt at the chance to participate in the exchange, and her mother, unable to talk her out of it, had had no choice but to follow.

  Like Daskar, Saresh had a clear incentive to be kind to me: as hadazi, he was directly responsible for my success or otherwise as a novi. After each of my half-dozen failures that week, he had come to see if I knew what I’d done wrong, which I did, and if I needed encouragement, which I did. Every conversation, however brief, confirmed my perception of him as warm and courteous and insightful. I kept those conversations as brief as I could, because being around Saresh for too long triggered an irrepressible urge to giggle. I couldn’t take him seriously. With his height and those silvery good looks, as well as his endlessly calm demeanor, he was like an artist’s rendering of a Vardeshi. He could have stepped out of any of half a dozen Vardramas I’d watched over the past ten years: all the ones where the heroine fell in love with an elegant blond Vardeshi aristocrat. He was an archetype made flesh. And, as if all that wasn’t enough, he was a telepath too.

  My newfound knowledge about the Vardeshi capacity for telepathy fascinated me. Whenever I was alone with Zey, I peppered him with questions. I knew I could have asked another crew member, but I felt more comfortable with Zey. And it was easier to frame my questions—and understand his answers—in the Vardeshi-English argot we continued defiantly to speak when no one else was around. “So Saresh can read anyone’s mind? At any time? Without them knowing it?”