by Malinda Lo
“I thought you’d like to see our living quarters,” Dr. Brand said.
The third level of the ship, beyond the bridge, had the same general layout as the first floor: long corridors lit with white lights along the seams, punctuated by the two triangular atriums. Reese reached out and touched the walls curiously; they looked like steel but felt like a dense, slightly warm plastic. The doors they passed had tiny glowing codes above them in symbols that Reese could not read. She guessed they were Imrian letters and numbers. Dr. Brand stopped outside one of those doors and pressed her fingertip to a nearly hidden latch that caused the door to open with a whoosh.
Only a few of them at a time could enter the small room. When it was Reese’s turn, she was captivated by the design of the compact space. She wanted to explore it slowly and figure out how each tiny shelf or folding object worked. There were panels in the wall that expanded at the touch of a finger into what appeared to be a desk. There was a bunk that descended like a Murphy bed, but Dr. Brand demonstrated that it could also be made into a couch. On the wall opposite the door, a screen displayed a view of the boarded-up buildings outside. “All the screens are calibrated to show the view as if it were seen through a real window,” Dr. Brand said.
David’s father was asking about the camera systems—where they were mounted, why they couldn’t be seen on the outside of the ship—but Reese was more fascinated by the devices that emerged from the wall over the desk. There were numerous cubbyholes and drawers that slid out like puzzle pieces. David smiled at her as she ran her fingers along the wall, opening and closing bins and drawers. “Having fun?” he said.
“You could be so well organized in this place,” she said, and then colored slightly when she heard what she’d said.
He laughed. “You’re a little OCD, aren’t you?”
She made a face at him.
Afterward, Dr. Brand took them down to the dining hall on the first level. In the center of the room, a floor-to-ceiling-length cylinder made of perforated clear plastic was full of plant life. Dr. Brand explained that this cylinder was one of several that existed to help filter the air in the ship. It ran all the way up to the third level; on the second level it was in the center of a research lab; on the third it was in the captain’s quarters. All around the cylinder were curved dining tables with benches affixed to the floor. Along one wall was a serving table that resembled a cafeteria-style buffet. There was no food laid out, but at one end Reese saw a coffee urn and a stack of cups, along with a sugar bowl and a carafe of what had to be cream.
“You drink coffee?” she said, surprised. It seemed so ordinary. She’d been expecting—or maybe hoping for—strange alien beverages.
Dr. Brand smiled. “I don’t, personally. It’s for our guests today. Would you like some?”
“Sure,” she said. The cups were a bit unusual—they were made of some kind of insulated plastic with ridged grips on the side rather than a handle—but the coffee tasted disappointingly normal.
Finally, Dr. Brand took them to the front of the triangular ship, directly below the bridge. When Reese stepped through the door at the end of the corridor, she understood that this was the whole point of the tour. The room was triangular in shape, and every wall was covered with a floor-to-ceiling screen like the ones that simulated windows, but these did not display the view. They were filled with graduated blue light, dark at the bottom and pale near the ceiling. It was like being in an aquarium. In the center of the room were three seats carved out of dark wood in a shape reminiscent of ocean waves, and the person who was seated in one of them rose when Reese and David entered.
“This is Eres Tilhar,” Dr. Brand said. “Eres is an ummi, a teacher.”
Eres was pale-skinned and had white hair cut close to the head, like a cap of feathers. At first Reese thought that Eres was male, but as Eres approached, Reese realized she couldn’t tell for sure. Eres wore a long dove-gray robe that looked like something a priest would wear, open down the front to reveal a suit similar to the captain’s, except in gray. There were no lines in Eres’s ageless face, but the gray eyes that studied Reese and David had a quality of experience that made it clear the teacher had not been born yesterday.
“Welcome,” Eres said. “Evelyn has told me so much about you.” Eres’s voice had the same slight accent that Akiya Deyir had; there was a softness on the Rs that reminded Reese of Spanish. Reese still could not discern Eres’s gender, and that flustered her.
Eres reached out to take their hands. There was something commanding about the teacher’s gesture, and Reese could not refuse. When she touched Eres’s hand, all of Reese’s awareness seemed to sharpen, as if the lens of her own inner eye had focused. She inhaled in surprise as Eres’s consciousness directed what she could sense.
Eres’s mind was like a great oak tree, ancient and broad-reaching, and Reese understood that Eres had been alive for a long time. Centuries. Visions of time passing flitted through Reese’s mind: an ocean pulling grains of white sand away from an alien shore; wind scouring the surface of a mountain with stone the color of deep purple; roots burrowing through layer upon layer of moist, dark soil, shifting the earth with their slow, steady motion. And yet Reese did not feel overwhelmed by the vastness of Eres’s awareness; she felt safe. Eres was a strong pilot, and Reese would not become lost when Eres was guiding her.
It was instantly clear to Reese that she had barely scratched the surface of the adaptation that the Imria had given her. The connection she had with David was only in its infancy, and in order for her to understand how to use this ability, she had to allow Eres to teach her. There was no other way, and the simplicity of her decision was a relief.
Eres let her go gently, but Reese swayed on her feet as the contact ceased. The lingering trace of Eres’s touch still pulsed through her like a bright light. She saw things more clearly now. It was as if cobwebs she had never known existed had been swept from her brain. She watched a tremor pass through David’s body as Eres let go of his hand too.
“It is my hope,” Eres said, “that the two of you will return here and allow me to teach you how to use your abilities. Will you return?”
Reese didn’t need to discuss it with David to know that he wanted to do this as much as she did. “Yes,” she said.
“Yes,” David said.
Eres Tilhar did not seem surprised.
CHAPTER 11
Amber was waiting at the visitors’ center when Reese, David, and their parents returned from the ship with Dr. Brand. She was still sitting in the chair where she had sat during the press conference, and when she looked up, seeking out Reese, she had an anxious expression on her face. She stood, smoothing out her dress, and headed toward Reese. There were about a half dozen reporters still in the area, waiting for their turn to tour the ship, and Reese noticed them swivel around to watch as Amber approached. She was wearing black patent leather pumps with her gray sheath dress, and the heels left little holes in the lawn as she walked. Reese’s chest tightened as Amber came to a stop a few feet away.
“Hi, Reese,” she said.
“Hi,” Reese said. She felt as if she were bracing herself for something bad.
Her mom touched her arm. “Honey, we’re going with Dr. Brand to talk to the ferry captain about getting you and David here for those lessons, okay? We’ll be back in a bit.”
“Okay,” Reese said.
“Nice to see you again, Amber,” her mom said as she was leaving.
Amber’s cheeks reddened. “Nice to see you too.”
Reese, Amber, and David stood in awkward silence as their parents left.
“So you’re going to meet with Eres Tilhar?” Amber said.
“Yeah,” Reese said. She wasn’t touching David but she could tell by the way he was standing, his body slightly turned away from Amber, that he wasn’t eager to talk to her.
“That’s good,” Amber said. “Eres is a great teacher. I’m glad you decided to do it.”
Reese didn’t say
anything. She was waiting for Amber to get to the point.
“Reese, can I talk to you? Alone?” Amber smiled apologetically at David. “Would you mind?”
David gave a brief shrug. “It’s not up to me.”
The smile on Amber’s face faltered. “Of course not. I just meant—”
“Why can’t you talk to me here?” Reese asked.
“Please. Just for a few minutes. Walk with me down to the cove.” She gave Reese a pleading look.
Despite her defensiveness, Reese was curious. “Fine,” she said finally. She glanced at David. “I’ll be right back.”
“Thank you,” Amber said, sounding grateful.
Reese started down the path toward the cove, and Amber had to hurry to keep up. “What do you want to talk about?” Reese asked.
“I know you’re still angry with me,” Amber began.
Reese shook her head. “That’s a funny way to put it.”
“You’re not angry?”
“Of course I’m angry,” Reese snapped. She lowered her voice as they passed the reporters, who were still watching them. “So what?” she added in a whisper.
“I want to apologize,” Amber said softly.
“You already did that.”
“But you don’t believe me.” Amber sounded miserable.
“What does it matter if I believe you?”
A flash of desperation passed over Amber’s face. “Because we’re going to have to see each other here. And I can’t stand it if you hate me.”
You should have thought of that a lot earlier, Reese wanted to say, but she bit off the words and looked away. They were already at the edge of the lawn, and the asphalt path curved around the cove directly in front of them. If they turned right they’d head toward the dock, and Reese didn’t want to run into her parents, so she turned left, skirting the edge of the water. Amber’s heels clicked on the pavement as they walked. At the end of the path was a bench overlooking the water, and Reese sat down. They were still in full view of the visitors’ center, and if she looked back she knew she’d see David waiting there. Amber sat on the other end of the bench and crossed her legs. Her shoes gleamed in the sunlight, but there was a clump of dirt on the right heel.
“I’ve had to lie my entire life,” Amber said quietly.
Reese kept her gaze on the water so that she didn’t have to look at Amber. “Is that an excuse?”
“No,” Amber said sharply. More softly, she continued, “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m trying to explain why I lied to you. I was born here, but for as long as I can remember, my mother warned me not to tell anyone about us. I slipped up too many times before I really understood what she meant, and we had to leave Earth for a while.”
“When?”
“I was five. We went back to Kurra for several years, until I was old enough to—to lie properly.” She paused, and Reese finally let herself look at Amber. She seemed sad, her eyes cast down to her lap. “I went to middle school in Arizona and I didn’t tell anyone who I really was. Nobody knew. It was… lonely.”
“You never told anyone? Not even—did you have friends?”
Amber gave Reese a tiny smile. “Yeah. I had a best friend, but I didn’t tell her. I wish I could have. I really do.”
It was said so simply, with such raw emotion, that Reese was taken aback.
“When I was fourteen, we had to go back to Kurra,” Amber continued. “Every fifteenth birthday is sort of a big deal for us, so I stayed on Kurra until after I turned fifteen. When we returned to Earth, I went to a private school in Massachusetts. I didn’t tell anyone there, either. By then it had become sort of normal for me. Like, I had this life at school, and it didn’t have anything to do with my mom’s work. I could pretend I was totally human, you know? Like I was actually going to apply to colleges and worry about financial aid and figure out what I wanted to major in. But none of it was real.” Amber sighed and looked out at the cove. The sunlight made her blond hair glow.
Reese wanted to be angry at her, but she found herself feeling sorry for her instead. She sounded so wistful.
“And then when I met you, I knew I had to keep lying,” Amber said. “It was understood that I would. It’s what I’ve been trained to do.” She turned back to Reese. “I’m sorry. I don’t blame you for being angry with me. But I wanted to explain to you why I did what I did.”
Reese felt the tightness in her chest again, as if her heart was straining against her rib cage. “I told Sophia Curtis that you lied.”
Amber blinked. “The TV journalist?”
“Yes. David and I had an interview with her. It airs this weekend. She asked if I knew you, and I told her that you were sent to keep an eye on us. And that you didn’t tell us who you were.”
Amber considered Reese for a minute. “Did you tell her anything else about us?”
Heat spread over Reese’s skin. She suddenly remembered leaning over the table at the Indian restaurant on Valencia Street, kissing Amber in full view of the other patrons. “No,” Reese said, her throat feeling constricted. “I didn’t tell her anything else.”
Reese couldn’t read the expression on Amber’s face. Was it dismay or acceptance? All she said was “Okay.” She lowered her gaze again, and Reese noticed she was wearing purple-gray eye shadow, the exact color of a bruise. Her lips trembled for one second, a movement so small that Reese saw it only because she was staring.
Amber said, “I’m really glad you’re talking to Eres Tilhar. She taught me when I was little.”
The change of subject left Reese momentarily disoriented. One word hung in the air between them. “She? Is Eres Tilhar a woman?”
Puzzlement flashed across Amber’s face, then cleared. “I forgot, Eres must look different to you. Eres is ummi, a teacher. Teachers are not male or female. They’re… ummi.”
Reese thought back to her conversations with Bri last year when she had been on her gender theory kick. “You mean she’s—he’s—Eres is a third gender?”
Amber seemed to struggle for a moment to find the right words. “I guess you could say that ummi is kind of a third gender, but it’s more like gender doesn’t matter to ummi; it’s no longer relevant to them.”
“But you called Eres ‘she.’ Should I do that too?”
“I doubt Eres cares what English pronouns you use. I used ‘she’ because you have to use pronouns in English and it’s easier to say ‘she’ than ‘it,’ which sounds awful. Sometimes I call Eres ‘he,’ though.” Amber’s forehead wrinkled in thought. “I guess it depends on what Eres is wearing. She’s not always in her ummi uniform.”
“Isn’t that totally offensive?” Reese asked. Bri had drummed into her that she should never assume which pronoun someone preferred. “Shouldn’t you ask Eres which pronoun she or he wants to use?”
Amber seemed a little amused. “You can ask if you want. But it’s not like that. I mean, ummi are basically beyond that stuff. They spend their time teaching susum’urda, which means they’re in other people’s consciousness a lot. It’s kind of like they’ve experienced so many other lives that they’ve become all different genders.”
Reese tried to wrap her mind around what Amber had said, but she was still fixated on how to refer to Eres Tilhar. “So in Imrian, what pronoun do you use with Eres?”
Amber paused as if realizing something. “Actually, in Imrian there is no him or her. The pronouns in Imrian are gender-neutral. Ene means him or her.”
“How do you know if you’re talking about a man or a woman?”
“Usually you know who you’re talking about. You use their names.”
“But if you don’t know their names when you’re talking about them, how do you know if they’re male or female?”
Amber gave her a funny look, as if Reese wasn’t getting it. “It doesn’t matter.”
Reese’s forehead furrowed. “All of you, except for Eres Tilhar, are so obviously male or female. If it doesn’t matter, why don’t you all look like Eres?”
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Now Amber seemed perplexed. “Eres is ummi; all ummi look sort of like her. They wear the same kind of clothes, the same—they’re sort of like monks, I guess. Except they’re not celibate. The rest of us wouldn’t look like ummi; that would be like you dressing up like a priest.”
“Okay.” That part made sense to Reese. “So the rest of the Imria—the ones who aren’t ummi—does gender matter to them? If there’s no him or her in Imrian… I guess I don’t understand how that would work.”
Amber considered Reese for a long moment, as if trying to make up her mind about something. Finally she said, “Well, language is only one part of this. There are other languages that also use gender-neutral pronouns—like Chinese. In spoken Chinese, there’s no audible distinction between him and her. You can work around it. Does that make sense?”
“I guess.”
“Okay. So then…” Amber flashed her a tentative smile. “You know that sex and gender are different things, right?”
Reese raised her eyebrows. “You mean biological sex, like male or female, versus gender?”
“Exactly. Biologically, sex is about whether you create eggs or sperm—that’s all. Gender is about everything else. The way you dress, the way you move, the way you act. Among humans, gender is usually correlated with sex, so women are supposed to look a certain way, like wear dresses and heels or whatever.”
“But there are also transgender people,” Reese said. “And other people who don’t follow those norms. It’s not that simple.”
Amber nodded. “Yes, absolutely. I’m talking about generally. Generally, humans understand gender as an expression of sex, even though that is changing in some places. But Imrians don’t have a similar concept of gender.”
Reese thought about what Amber had said. One element still puzzled her. “Is there biological sex among the Imria?”
“Oh, yes. Imrians are still male or female, in the most basic biological sense.”
