Ascending (The Vardeshi Saga Book 1)

by Meg Pechenick

  “It doesn’t work that way. He has to be touching the person. And it’s supposed to feel really strange, so they’d definitely notice it.” Zey reached for another sheet. We were folding bedsheets in the laundry, and we had to speak over the hum of the cleansing machines. There was a bank of them against the far wall, and most of them were running.

  “I wonder if he could read my mind,” I mused.

  “He’d never try it.” Zey spoke with conviction. “It would be too risky. Who knows what the effects would be? It could kill you. Or leave you alive but with no mind at all. Just an empty shell. A living death. That used to happen, back before there was a code of ethics for Voxes. In wartime they were used as interrogators. They extracted information from their enemies by force. If you tried to resist, your mind would just . . . shatter.”

  “That’s horrifying,” I said.

  Zey nodded. “It was a pretty dark moment for us. Good time to be a Blank, though. Since we’re impervious to forced Listening, we were used as spies, couriers, even battlefield commanders. It was probably the most powerful we’ve ever been. Unfortunately, other forms of torture work just fine on Blanks.”

  “I don’t know anything about that part of your history,” I said.

  “We don’t like to talk about it. It’s not who we are anymore.”

  “You conquered the darkness within.” My translation was imperfect, and Zey looked puzzled until I explained the reference.

  “Oh, right,” he said. “I always thought that part was kind of patronizing.”

  Comments like that made me grateful for Zey’s presence on the Pinion. His reactions to things were immediate and authentic. His shout of laughter when I mispronounced a word, transforming towel into something like brothel, was as genuine as his scowl when Saresh noted that he’d been late for two successive briefings. He seemed to be more or less an open book, although he could guard his emotions as well, as I discovered one day in the mess hall when Vethna made an offhand comment about someone being “as ignorant as a Blank.” I looked immediately for Zey’s response. There was none. He remained impassive, though I knew he’d heard the words.

  It was Hathan, passing by our table with his tray, who said coolly, “Is that supposed to be an insult, Rhevi?”

  As Vethna fumbled for an apology, I looked again at Zey. He was staring down at his plate, deliberately ignoring both the slur and his brother’s objection to it. Maybe he was embarrassed. I’d suspected from the first that, despite Zey’s attempts to downplay any perceived inequality, the status of Blank was not a coveted one. The exchange confirmed my inference. It also made me like Vethna a little less, and Hathan a little more.

  After a week on the Pinion, the middle Takheri brother remained more or less an enigma to me. We sat at separate tables in the mess, and outside of morning and evening briefing, the orbit of his duties seemed never to coincide with the orbit of mine. Twice in those first few days he came by to check on the progress of my training, once accompanied by Saresh, once alone. On each of those visits he asked questions about what I was learning and what I found difficult, speaking directly to me, rather than using Zey as a proxy as Khavi Vekesh had done. The questions were intimidating, since he made little effort to accommodate my developing language skills. I didn’t know if this was a compliment or an oblique insult. Both times I struggled to answer and came away certain I’d looked even more incompetent than I really was. I clung to the memory of the one occasion on which he’d spoken kindly to me, in the lounge on the day I came aboard. If not for that moment, I might have wondered if what I was interpreting as neutral politeness was in fact carefully guarded dislike.

  On the last night of my first week on the ship I made a linguistic error of a different kind, one that unquestionably caused me to fall another few degrees in his esteem. There was another Listening that evening, and Zey and I had arranged to meet in the mess hall for a game night. I’d brought along my deck of cards as well as one of the trendier tabletop board games. Zey had promised to bring a Vardeshi dice game which he claimed was simple enough for me to understand, although I had my doubts. When the door opened I was shuffling the cards and said in English without looking up, “Hey, Zey, did you want to start with poker or . . . ” I trailed off, belatedly registering that it was Hathan, not Zey, who had entered the room.

  “Suvi,” I said lamely in Vardeshi. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Evidently not.” I winced inwardly and waited to see if he would embellish the reprimand, but he said only, “I hope I’m not intruding.”

  “No, of course not. I just—” I broke off, disappointment mingling with relief, as Zey walked in behind him. “I thought you’d be at the Listening.”

  “They’re not compulsory,” Hathan said. Which wasn’t really what I’d meant, but it didn’t seem worth the effort to clarify.

  After that inauspicious beginning, the evening that followed was surprisingly pleasant. My two companions shared a pitcher of foamy gray Vardeshi beer, which looked to my eyes unappetizingly like dishwater, while I drank herbal tea and wished it was beer. There was some on board, along with a few bottles of stronger spirits, but I’d been strictly forbidden to touch any of it until I was fully acclimated to shipboard life. Zey did most of the talking, which was fine by me. It had been a long week, and my mental reserves were taxed to their limit by the demands of the games. Hathan said little, but he joined in the gameplay with apparent interest, although I was reasonably sure his presence owed little to any burning curiosity about Earth’s tabletop gaming culture. It seemed more likely that, in keeping with his command role, he was evaluating what took place on the ship when the rest of the crew were engaged in a Listening. Whether he was here on his own initiative or under orders from Khavi Vekesh, I couldn’t guess.

  Zey was as good as his word. Before he’d even sat down, he handed me a tiny wooden box that proved to contain six Vardeshi dice. I examined them curiously. They were small but surprisingly heavy, made of a metal resembling pewter. On each of their nine facets a glyph was stamped in gold. I recognized these as belonging to the set of forty-nine symbols used in the door code system. Zey explained that each one had a different number value assigned to it. He and Hathan looked on critically while I sketched the symbols in my notebook. It didn’t take long; I only had to look at each glyph once to reproduce it. “Very precise,” Hathan said when I’d finished. I thought I detected a note of surprise in his voice.

  “I studied Mandarin in college,” I said. “It uses a . . . picture-based writing system.” I slid the notebook and pencil over to Zey, who began assigning the numbers.

  “Ideographic,” Hathan said. “And it’s tonal. Good practice for Vardeshi.”

  I smiled at him. “Only four tones. No comparison.” He nodded, but didn’t return my smile. I felt a sting of regret. Had I been too—what was the right word? The only ones that came to mind evoked the airless social rituals of a bygone century. Too bold? Too forward? Did Vardeshi not smile at each other? I knew that couldn’t be true; Zey, for one, smiled more or less constantly. I picked up a die and pretended to study it until the moment passed.

  We sampled each of the games, beginning with poker. Zey already knew the rules; Hathan politely refused any explanation from either of us, glanced over the rule sheet I offered him, folded on the first hand, and laid down a straight flush on the second. He won the tabletop strategy game handily as well, efficiently pitting Zey and me against each other while he collected tokens and territories. In the dice game, however, Zey emerged triumphant, with me an unexpectedly close second. Zey gloated so outrageously that I looked for signs of irritation in his brother. I saw none.

  “Well,” he said philosophically, “you were at the Institute more recently than I was.” I’d learned that the dice game was popular among trainees at the Fleet Institute.

  “Yeah, right.” Zey grinned. “Eyvri beat you too. Explain that.”

  I said, “On Earth we call that beginner’s luck.” I hesitated
over the translation.

  Hathan corrected one of the words, then repeated, “Beginner’s luck. Perhaps that accounts for my wins too.”

  “Maybe.” I doubted it though. From our first meeting that level gray gaze had signaled intelligence to me, and nothing I had seen tonight contradicted that impression. I replayed in my mind his seemingly instantaneous appraisal of the poker rule sheet, which implied both an outstanding grasp of English and a quick strategic mind. There had, of course, been another factor contributing to his victory: an excellent poker face. I wondered if his fellow Vardeshi found him difficult to read as well, or if my limited acquaintance with their body language was to blame. He hadn’t seemed angry when Vethna insulted his brother. Or when he’d caught me speaking English against orders. Recalling that little awkwardness, I wondered if he had decided to forgive what was surely, in the scheme of things, a minor transgression.

  Apparently he hadn’t. The table had been cleared, and we had all risen to leave, when Hathan turned to me and said, “Novi, a word of advice.”

  Zey looked from one of us to the other in perplexity. I thought I knew where this was going, but I feigned confusion. “Sir?”

  He paused as if considering his phrasing. “You haven’t been among us very long, and I know you’re still finding your way, so let me be explicit. An order from the khavi—any order—is not to be taken lightly. You were commanded to speak no English until your Vardeshi improves. Did the order confuse you?” I studied his face, searching for mockery, but there was none; the question was sincere.

  “No, it was clear. But . . .” I faltered. I knew what I wanted to say: It’s unfair. It’s unreasonable. It’s exactly what Dr. Sawyer warned me about. Humanity has something unique to offer the universe, so let me offer it. It’s why I’m here. I didn’t know how to make it sound like anything other than the petulant complaint of an undisciplined subordinate. And even if I could have found the right words, given to whom I was speaking, they were bound to come out wrong.

  “Yes?” Hathan waited patiently for my objection.

  “I—” I abandoned the attempt. “I . . . will endeavor to be more satisfactory.”

  “I don't doubt it,” he said, and departed without another word.

  “Sigils,” Zey said from behind me. “He caught you speaking English?”

  “I’m an idiot. I heard the door, and I thought it was you. I should have known better.”

  “I should have told you he was coming. Hathan comes down pretty hard on insubordination.”

  “He should. I ignored a direct order.” I sighed. “It’s just such a stupid order. Well, if he didn’t hate me before, he definitely hates me now.”

  “He doesn’t hate you.” Zey sounded surprised. “Why would you think that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, maybe because all he does is point out my mistakes.”

  “He points out mine too. It’s his job. And trust me, he’s a lot nicer about yours.” When I shook my head, Zey insisted, “I’d know if he hated you. He’s my brother, remember?”

  On the last evening of my first week I sent home another video transmission. This one was longer than the first, though still brief; I knew my medical telemetry and mission notes would tell a more complete story. I had spent some time rehearsing the message beforehand and managed to work in a few covert signals for Tristan. I began with the direct smile and left-hand wave that was our general all-clear, but later on, in the midst of declaring that everyone on the Pinion’s crew was helpful and completely supportive of the exchange, I scratched my right thumbnail against my right eyebrow to signify I have reservations about this detail. I let it stand at that for now. It was too early to know for sure if my instincts were correct, and I didn’t want to say anything I would have to walk back in a future message, especially not with Saresh standing politely just out of view of the camera. Khavi Vekesh had asked him to sit in on my recording sessions, he had explained, to ensure that the technical aspects of the process went smoothly. I didn’t mind. Thanks to Tristan, I had expected as much.

  I closed the message with good wishes for Kylie and the other Strangers, who were due to embark on their own missions in only a few days. “You guys are going to do fine,” I said. “Be safe. Be strong. And look for the Blanks. They’ll help you figure things out.” Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Saresh smile at that.

  When the transmission was away, he said, “Good work, Eyvri. Your first week as a novi is finished.”

  “To be fair, I didn’t do any actual work until day three,” I pointed out.

  “I think you’re wrong about that. But in any case, you’ve been starside for a week. What do you think?”

  “About the Pinion? The crew?”

  His gesture encompassed the room as well as the viewport through which a glimmer of stars was visible on our right. “All of it.”

  “I think . . .” I ran an idle finger along the edge of my flexscreen. “I think I don't understand why your people would want to have anything to do with us. We’re so far behind you. What could you possibly get out of this alliance? It seems so one-sided.”

  “It doesn’t seem that way to me.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Once again I would have missed his smile if I hadn’t already been looking at him; it was there and then gone like a brief spill of sunlight on a gray day. “But it’s a good question, and I don’t want to influence your thinking, so I’m not going to tell you why I feel that way. Not yet, at any rate.”

  “I thought your job as hadazi was to answer all my questions.”

  “My job as hadazi is to give you the tools you need to answer them on your own. But if, a year from now, you still don’t know what the Vardeshi stand to gain from an alliance, I’ll tell you. You have my word.”

  “Well,” I said, my eyes on the viewport now, “I don’t know why you guys changed your minds about us, but I’m glad you did. Because without the Vardeshi I never would have seen any of this. I know it’s only been a week, but it’s been the most incredible week of my life.”

  And it had. What I admitted only to myself—acknowledging Dr. Okoye’s insight as I did so—was that it had also been the loneliest.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dr. Okoye had been wrong about one thing: there was a honeymoon period. It lasted exactly eight days. On the ninth morning it was as if my body suddenly caught up to what my mind already knew: that my time in this slightly off-kilter world wasn’t a brief sojourn to be endured and forgotten, but a prolonged immersion, with no end in sight. It was as if I had been unconsciously filtering out the unfamiliar elements of my new environment as a form of self-protection, and all at once the filter had been ripped away. Suddenly the differences were all I could see.

  The first thing to draw my attention was the lighting. There was a quality to the Pinion’s lights that strained my eyes. I’d already decreased the brightness on my flexscreen, and I did the same for the illumination in my quarters, but I had no control over the lighting on the rest of the ship. Anton had sent me along with a selection of tinted glasses for exactly this eventuality, but they all looked idiotic, and none of them seemed to help much. I left them in their cases and went to bed with a headache every night. The Pinion’s gravity was a shade heavier, too, and the oxygen content of the air was minimally lower than that of Earth. I wasn't in any danger, because the air in my quarters was oxygenated to compensate, but the high gravity and low oxygen combined made me feel sluggish and short of breath all the time. Workouts were particularly hard; Anton’s post-holiday analogy had been a good one. Furthermore, the Vardeshi had minimally better hearing than humans, so everyone’s voice was pitched a bit too low. I found myself constantly asking people to repeat themselves, which was aggravating because everyone assumed the flaw was in my comprehension, not my hearing.

  And on top of all this, the clock was different. Those extra two hours wrecked my circadian rhythm. After the first week, I had absolutely no innate sense of time, and I
would wake in the middle of the night and squint at the faint blue symbols on the panel by my bed without the slightest idea what they meant. I felt like I was continually recovering from jet lag. Before going to sleep each night, I set two alarms for the morning, spaced fifteen minutes apart, and triple-checked them. The one benefit of the long and draining days was that I climbed into bed each night so deeply exhausted that it didn’t matter what time my body thought it was. I fell instantly into sleep and stayed there, submerged beneath its dark waters, until the shrill klaxon of my Vardeshi alarm jolted me awake.

  Almost at once I started to understand what Anton had been trying to tell me: in conditions of extreme stress, immediate physical needs become emergencies. When I was thirsty, or cold, or had to use the bathroom, or needed lip balm, the horizons of my world narrowed to that single burning pinpoint of need. I couldn’t focus on anything else until it had been satisfied. I took Anton’s advice. “Don’t stand on ceremony,” he had said. “Don’t wait until it’s convenient. Remember that you’ll be the only one who’s actually living in an alien environment. Your body will be working harder than it ever has before. Listen to it. Every instinct is a survival instinct.”

  I would have held my ground on this front even if I hadn’t had any support among the crew; after all, my rights were clearly spelled out in my contract. Fortunately, though, Daskar was firmly on my side. The first time I got up and left in the middle of a briefing, she came after me, concerned about my well-being. I hadn’t gone far; I was sitting on the floor of the hallway, my head between my knees, breathing from my oxygen inhaler. I’d raced from a long workout to a shower to the briefing and hadn’t realized until I started feeling light-headed that I’d forgotten to supplement my oxygen. Daskar sat down on the floor beside me and stayed there until I recovered. As we took our seats again, with only a few minutes left in the meeting, Ziral made a pointed comment about subordinates who left the room while their superiors were speaking. I pretended I hadn’t heard her, and Daskar didn’t address it at the time, but Zey told me she raised the subject at a meeting on my next day off. Apparently she told the crew in no uncertain terms that they were obligated to respect my needs. “Don’t deceive yourselves,” she said. “No one else in the Fleet is having this conversation, because no one else needs to. The other humans are passengers, not crew, and they’re free to do whatever they want. It’s a testament to how well Eyvri is adapting to our ways that we notice it when she doesn't.”