Portals

by Ann Christy

  I figure today is the day. I bring up the Kassa language, then ask for written translations of random things. Most of them are unimportant words for food, good morning, numbers, or other trivia. Slipped into those many requests, I ask for the words I really want and carefully copy them into my notebook. The glyphs are hard to copy, very complex, and many of them look almost the same except for tiny nuances that I have to capture properly.

  The words I slip in are the ones I might need when I steal the ship. Don’t interfere. Please stay back. Evacuate the dock. Get off this object for safety. Let me go. I have a half-dozen more like that.

  Hub doesn’t break in, so I guess I’ve been oblique enough in my quest. I’ve already ordered corrosion proof writing surfaces that can handle the Kassa atmosphere, and ink as well, though the liquid is very thick. If something close to hot tar were paint, then that would be the Kassa version of ink. I told Hub I wanted to draw something for the Kassa, which is true, but also not exactly the truth.

  I’ll need these if I meet up with them on my way to the ship. And I don’t want them hurt.

  The paper, which is not paper at all, is slick and shiny. The strange pigment that came with it flows smoothly onto the surface. It’s really nice, sort of smooth and buttery feeling, though it even smells like I imagine hot tar would smell. The woefully inadequate artist inside me wants to play with this medium and surface.

  But not now. If I’m lucky, maybe someday. I hope someday.

  *****

  I discover at least one downside to the pigment. It is impossible to scrub off without taking a layer of skin with it, maybe four layers. Eventually, it hurts too much, and I give up, deciding I’d rather deal with unsightly marks all over my hands than take off any more of my skin.

  It really stings. I would have been much less messy had I known it didn’t wash off.

  Even so, I dally and dither over which dress to put on for ages. Which one goes best with black streaks on reddened skin? Eventually, I choose one with a flared skirt and a sweetheart neckline. The fabric is blue, which is a favorite color of Jack’s. There’s a tiny pattern of flowers on the wide belt to give it some pop and with the pretty light brown sandals, it looks just right for a date.

  My hair, however, needs work. Right up until the moment Hub breaks in with a call, I try to curl it so that it looks natural, but without frizz. It’s not too bad, but I’m not a magazine cover by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Alright Hub, I’m ready,” I say, not wanting to be late.

  Once I’m in the hallway, a series of pink dashes lights up along the wall, flashing so that the dashes seem to point in a specific direction.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Your directions. I can simply tell you when to turn instead, if you prefer.”

  “No, this is perfect. Can I do this anywhere?”

  “Yes, Lysa. Simply ask for your destination and it will know to display it in this fashion for you.”

  “That’s handy,” I remark, following the flashing dashes until we reach an intersection inside the ring. Then the dashes shift from the wall to the little control surface where those subway cars come up. I cross to it, and a car rises almost immediately. This is supposed to be a surprise, but I’m intensely curious as to where we’re headed.

  Holding onto the rail, I bring up the view outside using the hand interface rather than my implant. I’m too close to my goal now to want to use it unless I absolutely must. I can tell the moment I look outside that we’re heading someplace I’ve never been before. I had briefly considered the possibility that Jack had set up some sort of romantic dinner at the platform where we first saw the ship, but that can’t be it.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, unable to hold back any longer.

  “To see Jack,” Hub says, most unsatisfactorily.

  When the car stops, then rises through the levels, it doesn’t stop on any level I’ve been to before. Instead, we keep going up through three more levels and the work spaces in between. Now, I’m really curious. I hold back my questions, but barely.

  Once I disembark, more pink dashes guide me, but the hallway here is short and closed in, like I’m walking through a tunnel. “Hub, is this a temporary wall or something?”

  “Yes, Lysa. I didn’t want to remove access to this level merely so you could cross a small space like this. With such a short distance, putting on an environment suit would have been cumbersome as well.”

  “Plus, you knew I was dressing up, right?”

  “Perhaps.”

  I snort a laugh, because I know that’s exactly what’s going on. Environment suits are not romantic, and I’d bet Jack thought of that too. I have a good feeling about this.

  At the door, there’s a big warning that Earth atmosphere is beyond the threshold. Before I even get my hand to the control square, the door slides open and I’m faced with nothing I expected. There’s a relatively narrow hallway—maybe ten feet wide—running along the front of an enormous tank of water. There’s almost no light aside from that which bleeds into the space from the doorway behind me. The tank is dark in this gloom, anything inside invisible to me.

  I realize what this must be, and stop short. “What’s going on, Hub?”

  “Lysa, if you’ll turn on your implant, you can speak with Jack. Otherwise, you’ll find it difficult to communicate. I can translate, but that might be uncomfortable for you, depending on the content of the conversation.”

  I still haven’t entirely passed the threshold, my hand blocking the door so it can’t close. I’m not sure I’m ready for this. Not at all sure. No, I’m definitely not ready.

  Lights come to life from everywhere. The water goes from dark to regular colored—the grayish-blue of clear water in volume. The tank is huge, really huge. I can’t tell if the top is really the top but it rises at least three stories. The tank also clearly reaches far below me, but I can’t be sure how far. As for width, there’s no indication at all.

  “I don’t know if I can turn it on,” I say, my voice shaky and quiet.

  “It’s alright, Lysa. All will be well,” Hub says.

  Stepping all the way inside so the door can close behind me, I turn on my implant. Jack’s voice fills my head. –alright? Why isn’t she answering?

  I’m here, Jack.

  Are you alright? I mean, can you do this? Did I do the wrong thing?

  There’s so much emotion bleeding through, so much uncertainty and eagerness and a deep fondness for me. The intensity brings heat to my cheeks. I know Jack’s species is more emotional than humans, but I wonder if this intensity is a side-effect of being in his true form, where emotions and communication are prioritized.

  While I’m so nervous that my knees are shaking and my hands trembling, I hold that back and answer him, It’s perfectly alright. I’m a little nervous, but I do want to see you as you are.

  I can feel the smile like a ray of warm sunshine. I’m nervous too, he sends me.

  There’s a darkening spot in the water and the darker patch grows as he nears. It only takes a few seconds and then…there he is. I stumble against the wall behind me, feeling the cool surface with fingers that have gone from shaky to almost numb.

  He lets me look, lets me collect myself. I can feel that coming through as easily as words.

  While the squid jokes now make more sense, he’s nothing like that really. His body is about the same size as mine, but billowy and bulbous, colored a startling shade of green. He has some sort of tentacle like things, but they’re wider near the body, more like sails than tentacles. Each one ends in a tiny, delicate point in a darker shade of green.

  Should I go away? The words are accompanied by flashes of light around the circumference of his body. Orange, green, blue, yellow…lots of colors…and the flashes are quite bright. It’s beautiful.

  Is that you speaking? Those lights? And no, please don’t go. I’m just trying to take it all in.

 
He ripples and compresses, then his sails billow as he drifts lower in the tank. If those lights are his eyes, then we’re almost face to face. Except, he has no face. And that’s hard to accept.

  Yes, we speak that way and also like this. Look lower.

  I do, and a series of tiny ripples moves across the bulbous part of his body.

  What did you just say?

  That I think you look beautiful in that dress.

  I laugh at that. So, you have a word for dress?

  Well, no, not exactly. I had to make that part up.

  I step closer until I can put my hand against the tank. I spread my fingers over the spot where his ripples originated from and smile at him, hoping he can see it. I think you look beautiful in your dress too.

  A series of rapid flashes goes around his body, his tentacle ends curling up toward his underside. Then he shoots away from me so quickly I almost jump back. His body elongates and grows thin as he does complicated spins and whirls in his tank. There’s no translation other than emotion: joy.

  I laugh and watch him, wondering what it would be like to be able to move through the water like that.

  When he returns, I figure I’d best get the big questions out of the way. It wouldn’t do to keep them inside until they became awkward.

  Can I ask you things? About your body?

  Yes! Ask anything you like. I can tell he’s glad that I’m curious, rather than running for the hills.

  Where is your face? I mean, do you have one? Where are your eyes, your mouth? How do you eat? Why do you have two forms of communication?

  Jack’s laughter is reflected in the bright spots of orange and yellow that flow around his row of spots. Now that I’m close, I see that they aren’t square or round, just sort of blotches that aren’t even. They’re exactly the same as the ones he showed me during that first ride in the subway car.

  I don’t have a face like yours, which is as weird for me as it is for you. I mean, your face. But I like your face now. It just takes getting used to.

  This surprises me, and I widen my eyes at my aquatic boyfriend who’s a cross between a squid, an octopus, and a cartoon character. Still, I guess that would make me fairly odd-looking to him too.

  Okay. Moving on.

  His body ripples again, but he moves on. The lights you see are one way of speaking, and can be used within a larger group. The tactile communication on my body is for close friends or family only. A way of private communication. As for my eyes, those are here.

  He tilts a little and I see tiny depressions in his skin below the array of lights. They don’t look like eyes to me at all, but what do I know?

  My mouth is underneath. Do you want to see?

  I sort of feel like I’m asking him to take off his pants, but he doesn’t seem to mind. If that’s not rude, yes.

  It’s not rude. We don’t wear clothes. Everyone sees everyone else. We don’t have the concept of modesty that humans do. It wouldn’t make sense in the water.

  When he tilts away from me and billows his sails, I see what he has hidden under there. And it’s nothing much, just a tiny mouth with no lips. It flexes open and closed in a rhythmic pattern. You breathe through it too?

  Exactly!

  When he tilts back, I see the unmistakable pattern of his trace on the underside of one of his sails. It looks the same as the one he had as a human. At least I’ll be able to pick him out of a crowd. Traces are unique to each individual and change as they take on additional forms and need more trace to remember every type of body experience.

  Are you alone in there?

  No. There are two others, but they’re on the other side to give me privacy. They were working the Earth transfers, but they’re taking a break now that it’s stopped. I’m going to stay in here for a few days, so you can decide what you think about this.

  Giving me space to decide if I can deal with it? Jack is probably the most considerate person ever if this is what he’s doing. Then again, he couldn’t possibly be any different from me, and this is something we’ll need to deal with eventually. Of course, the more I watch him moving with such grace around the tank, the more intrigued I am. What would it be like to be able to do that? What would it feel like?

  Yes. It’s a lot to take in, he sends, as if confirming my thoughts.

  You’re not so different. I like your color.

  He seems bashful almost. His tentacles curl a little. I won’t get my red for a while yet.

  Get your red? Now I’m curious for sure.

  There is some obvious bashfulness now. I can almost feel embarrassment or something like it. It feels like red cheeks look. Then one of his tentacles touches a spot above his array of lights. When we turn red up here, then we can go nearer the surface. I’ve never stayed in this body long enough to age it and I always start over from the age I was when I left my home world when I change back. So, I’ve never gotten my red.

  I’m not going to say I’m teasing him, but it could totally be construed as a tease. You mean for mating?

  All his lights flash and I laugh, because I don’t need a translation to know that’s a groan of embarrassment.

  Never mind! I won’t ask that again. Of course, I’m still laughing, so there’s that.

  As strange as it sounds given the circumstances, I start to relax and enjoy my time with Jack as he was when he was born. The conversation is good, and I think he starts to relax too. The colors in his lights grow more mellow, his sails more billowy. And watching his lights as he talks is almost hypnotic.

  I think that if I want to have a life worth living, I’ll have to emulate my favorite space opera series on TV. I’ll need to think of others not as what they look like, but as who they are. In my case, I have it easy. We can change forms as easily as we change clothes. I don’t have to choose one form or the other. Jack and I and Esme and Rosa and Drives Too Hard and everyone else I’ve met can be whatever we want. Sometimes that might be the same, sometimes not.

  But no matter what form he’s in or I’m in, he’s still Jack and I’m still Lysa.

  When so much time has passed that my feet begin to ache and my bladder starts yammering at me, I know it’s time to leave. He seems tired too, though I’m not sure how I can tell. I just can.

  Leaning my cheek against his tank, I put my hand up and he curls a tentacle there. I think you’re lovely, Jack.

  I think you’re lovely too.

  Thirty-Five

  I have everything I need and all that’s left is to figure out when to do it. At least, I think I have what I need. I can’t be sure, since I’ve never plotted the heist of a spaceship from a giant, sentient space station before. I can’t help but wonder how many things I’ve missed, how many problems I’ve not considered, how many stumbling blocks I haven’t seen that will knock me for a loop when the time comes.

  The truth is that my biggest stumbling block is probably going to be the ship. I have my driver’s license, but driving my mom’s car on side roads does not prepare one for driving spaceships. It just doesn’t. My hope is that the ship is like everything else around here and simply does what it’s asked to do. Hub said the ships have a low-level version of its mind, so I’m guessing it will be like having command systems, but without all the omniscience and personality.

  I hope.

  Hub also told me that it didn’t have any control over the ships, so that gives weight to the idea that the ships carry a separate program, one in which Hub isn’t the boss.

  Jack being gone is turning out to be good for me. Leaving him was something I dreaded. I’d been going over what I would do the last night I was here. At least a thousand different ways to say how I felt without giving away that I was leaving have been considered and discarded. Now, I won’t have to do that. I’m relieved.

  We chatted this morning while I ate breakfast, mind-chatted anyway. I tried to figure out if he wanted me to come there and see him again today without outright asking. Eventual
ly, he seemed to get it and told me that he thought it would be best if I processed everything without pressure from him. It will only be for a few days, he’d said.

  Yeah, a few days. Except I might not be here by the end of those few days.

  I’d agreed with him, but it was hard to do. I can’t hug him like he is now. There’s no way to get a surreptitious kiss goodbye, though even thinking of kissing him in aquatic form is a little weird. For a few minutes, I consider asking Hub if I can change form and join him in the tank, but really, that’s a step too far for me at this point. Plus, I don’t want to go back to Earth with a trace and I’ll get one if I change form. The last thing I want is my world thinking I’m an alien puppet about to take them for slaughter.

  And really, they’re going to freak as it is. I would freak. There will be epic levels of freaking out, without any doubt.

  In keeping with my plan to make my movements seem normal for as long as possible, I take the transport toward the docks, but this time I bring my suit, so I can enter the work floor. I switch between this and going up onto the platform every other day or so. Jack usually came with me before, but I’m keeping up the habit even without him.

  Hub should simply figure that I really like the docks. The other day, I delivered a painting of Drives Too Hard, but I couldn’t tell who was who on the work floor until I contacted him via implant and he hopped in excitement. I’m not entirely sure what he thought of my painting—particularly considering that I did it on their shiny paper with their pigments, which are not subtly colored at all—but he conveyed excitement through the implant and seemed pleased to receive the gift.

  And yes, I’ve figured out that Drives Too Hard is a “he.” Or rather, as close a corollary to a male as can be assigned. They’re actually very different in terms of gender, but for right now, in this life stage, the friendly Kassa is a he. In a few years…well…that will change. I wish I could stay and see that, but I can’t. He’s going to need the support of his friends when that time comes. I had hoped I would be one of those friends.