"All right, granted," Vasiht'h said, following the amusement up the mindline until it infected him too. He padded to Jahir's side and sat next to him. "I just thought I'd leave you the illusion of it, since it's so important to Eldritch."
"I prefer to look at the truth of it," Jahir said. "And learn what I might about it." He glanced up at the Glaseah. "You as well, yes?"
"Yes." Vasiht'h watched him resume toweling his hair. "It's grown."
"It has," Jahir said, looking at it. And then, abruptly: "Would you cut it for me?"
The startlement the mindline brought him would have been funny had the matter not been serious; had not his own intensity communicated itself to his friend. He had not had the chance to cut his hair since coming to the Alliance, and it had become long enough to trouble him, even growing as slowly as it did. But he had not known how to cut it himself, and had been troubled reconciling his own traditions—of the intimacy of the master/servant relationship that made it safe for someone to touch him, to use scissors near his head—with the Alliance's impersonal customs, where grooming was a transaction to be paid for between strangers. It had never sat well with him. And though Vasiht'h was not and would never be to him what his body servant had been, he could think of no one else he trusted with that intimacy. "The length. It belongs... about here." He put the flat of his hand at his ribcage. "Any longer is..."
Vasiht'h frowned, groping through the impressions Jahir was allowing to seep into the mindline, and Jahir allowed it because he didn't know himself how to explain. The Glaseah said, slowly, "Not irritating. And not upsetting. And not an imposition, or inappropriate..."
"Not where I want it," Jahir finally said, because in the end, it was that simple. His first moment of childish rebellion against the things that seemed to make no sense on his world... the same things that had eventually driven him off of it, seeking the answers others had contrived to all the challenges of forming a healthy society.
Perhaps the Queen was wise in casting her seeds to the wind. He loved the Alliance with a passion that surprised and disarmed him. But he loved his world, too, in all its myopic stagnation, and wanted nothing more than to return one day and bring all that he'd learned to them.
But not today. And not, he thought, looking at Vasiht'h's alien face, for a long time.
"It's not where I want it," he said again. "And it would be awkward for me to trim it myself. I could take myself somewhere and have a stranger do it, but I would prefer otherwise, if you were willing."
Vasiht'h reached out, hesitated. Jahir sent a wordless encouragement through the mindline, and the Glaseah gathered the ends of his hair in small hands, testing the texture. Jahir sensed his curiosity at it, so different from that of the brothers and sisters he'd groomed growing up. "It wouldn't be hard," Vasiht'h said. "As long as you didn't want some fancy style. For that you really would need someone with training. But if all you want is to take some length off of it?"
"That is all I need," Jahir said.
"Then I can do that." Vasiht'h met his eyes. "This is important to you?"
How much to share? He was obligated to keep the Veil. The Eldritch Queens who'd instated it had never imagined one of their own willingly committing to the intimacy he had with an alien, by embracing the mindline; he wondered what Liolesa would say if he asked her where to draw the line, but his few memories of her were of her remote beauty, and the occasional wicked sparkle in her eye, hinting at a personality that would re-shape a world or kill everyone trying.
"It is important to me," he said, slowly. "To be self-sufficient. And if I am not to be so, then to be open to allowing others to shoulder some of my burdens without..." Find words. What words? "Without the armor of condescension or arrogance."
Vasiht'h shook his head. "I'll get a comb and scissors. I have one in my kit."
Sitting on the floor with his hands in his lap, Jahir sought any sign of regret or unease, found none. Sorrow for the boy he'd been, perhaps, for being trapped in a system impervious to change. But all things changed. One day, he would be part of it.
A blanket draped around his shoulders. He looked up, startled from his thoughts. /I was—/
"Cold," Vasiht'h agreed, and settled down behind him and began to comb, little pulls at his scalp. "Besides, it'll give the hair a place to fall so we won't have to sweep it up." The Glaseah chuckled. "I wish my sibs had had hair this straight. Would have made things a lot easier!"
"You cut it for them?"
"Oh, we all took turns," Vasiht'h said, sounding distracted. "There were a lot of us. Twelve Glaseahn kids... that's a lot of legs and arms and heads and wings, and all of them need some kind of grooming. Claws trimmed, hair cut, fur trimmed or thinned, wing vanes oiled—"
"You oil your wings?" Jahir asked, interested.
"If they get cracks, or it's too dry out," Vasiht'h said. A pressure against Jahir's ribcage then. "Here?"
"There, thank you."
The scissors pulled at his hair, snipped. Vasiht'h brushed and continued. "The boys all wanted short hair—it was easier to take care of—but some of my sisters preferred longer styles. I had seven sisters... I got pretty good at it."
Which explained the warm comfort in the mindline; this was a familial activity for his roommate, reassuring in its familiarity. Jahir basked in it, eyes closed, and let his thoughts wander until Vasiht'h stopped abruptly, his thoughts crystallizing into a single exclamation.
"Arii?" Jahir asked.
"You... you were going to go buy all the furniture I was looking at and liking!" Vasiht'h exclaimed.
Jahir hesitated, then said, rueful, "The mindline has its own notions of privacy, I see."
"You can't," Vasiht'h said. "Promise me you're not going to do that. And yes, I feel you feeling at me, I know how you are with promises, but I mean this. You can't... just... do all of that. And no, it's not about us making decisions about things together this time."
Jahir glanced over his shoulder at him. "What then is it about?"
Vasiht'h hesitated, scissors lax in his hands. Shaking himself a little, he said, "I'm... not sure. Here. Tell me."
A flush then, of embarrassment and indignation, and a little resentment. Jahir chased the latter down and found helplessness near its root, an emotion he had to unfold, and unpack, and open yet again to get to its wellspring: Partners share everything. Responsibility too.
No wonder, he thought, that this had risen through his mind while allowing someone else to cut his hair, brought forth by his own discomfort with the Alliance egalitarianism, not because he disagreed with it because he did not, had never, because he had always found his world's stratification unfair... but because he'd grown up being told he must take care of those who had less than he.
"I understand," he said. "And you are right. I have an idea."
"One I'll like?" Vasiht'h asked.
Jahir nodded. "I think so. But perhaps we should finish what we're doing first."
"All right." The gentle pressure returned, the high-pitched snips of the shears. After a moment, Vasiht'h said, "This is hard for you, isn't it. Adjusting."
"I fear it will be," Jahir said, low. "It is one thing to move through the Alliance as... a... tourist. Another to participate in it quite as fully as I now must, if I am to be a fair partner."
The gentler pressure of the comb now. "We have an advantage at least, if communication is the source of a lot of misunderstanding."
"Yes," Jahir said.
A long pause. Then, "I think that's done. How's that feel?"
Jahir straightened, felt the strands tickle his arms above the elbow. "Much better, thank you."
"Good. I'll get ready for bed, and then you tell me this idea of yours, all right?"
"Agreed," Jahir said.
While Vasiht'h used the bathroom, he looped the blanket close around his shoulders and padded into the empty great room. It took some doing to find what he needed; it had been in his bags, but someone had partially unpacked them on their arrival h
ere. By the time Vasiht'h emerged, however, he'd used the board hung next to their pantry to good effect, and stepped back to allow his partner to see the results. Vasiht'h reached up and touched the small papers, each one bearing some item they'd seen on their excursion.
"So that we know what we still need," Jahir said. "But each is on a separate page, so we can take it down when we've decided we will go get it. We can take turns, if it pleases you better. Or do it more informally."
Vasiht'h's satisfaction welled through the mindline. He stroked the paper that read 'kitchen table.' "This one first. I know a place we can rent one for cheaper than the one we saw in the store earlier."
"And if we decide we want to keep it?" Jahir wondered.
"Then I will let you foot the bill of having a genie create one from the specs," Vasiht'h said with a grin. "This is perfect, arii. Thank you for really listening about this."
"It is my pleasure. Also... my responsibility. Yes?"
Vasiht'h glanced up at him. "You... you're going to be something else to live with."
"A good something else, I hope," Jahir said.
"I'm going to grow like a tree," Vasiht'h said, and the mindline bloomed with the image of one of Anseahla's great rainforest giants, exuberant and vital and bright, twined 'round with wildflowers. It made sense of a metaphor that would otherwise have been opaque to him... and gentled an anxiety in him he hadn't even known was lingering, from a memory of dreams of dying flowers, and he a helpless gardener. But it wasn't his task to be sole gardener of blooms too delicate to survive without aid, was it?
/No,/ Vasiht'h answered. /That's not how it works./
"I will learn," Jahir said. And then, his smile growing lopsided. "But grant me some forgiveness at how long it will take me to believe it."
Vasiht'h grinned. "As long as we figure it out together, we'll do fine."
The following day, Jahir left early for his appointment with KindlesFlame, leaving Vasiht'h to sit in the kitchen and look out the windows at the birds landing on the edge of the fountain. He finished his breakfast and his coffee, cleaned and regarded the barren apartment. And then he checked the time on Anseahla and made the call he'd been avoiding, or too busy to place, for months.
His mother answered on the first alert, appearing on the apartment's wall screen. It was larger than the one in their student flat, and of far higher fidelity. He could have counted the gray hairs framing her eyes.
"Vasiht'h," she said. "My love, I've been expecting you."
"Have you?" he asked, trying not to fidget. "I know I should have called...."
She shook her head. "Your sister told me you were busy with something." She held up a hand to still him. "No, she didn't say what. I knew better than to ask, anyway. She's always kept your confidences. But now that you're here, I want to know what's going on. Your letters were far too cagey."
"Dami," he began. And then, because the enormity of it was overwhelming and he couldn't get around it: "I've found a mind-bonded."
She stared at him, her ear feathers splayed. "Vasiht'h?"
"A mind-bonded," he said, shoulders slumping with relief. If he told his parents, it was real, wasn't it? Somehow it made it feel that way. "A real mindline. Like something out of stories."
"You met someone?" she asked, bewildered. "Last I heard you weren't even good friends with any Glaseah..."
"Not any Glaseah," Vasiht'h said, feeling calmer. "My roommate, the Eldritch? Him."
"Oh, love." She stared at him, and he could almost feel her compassion and her concern and her happiness. "Are you sure? They live a long time, don't they?"
"They can," Vasiht'h said, and saying this made it real too. "But they can die just as easily as the rest of us. Didn't you used to say that life was too short not to live?"
"As I recall, right before you left for Seersana," she said, her mouth twitching.
"You were right," Vasiht'h said. And added, "Oh, Dami. Did you ever have to shake Tapa to keep him from paying for everything?"
She started laughing.
He told her everything: the mindline's first attempts to ravel, the advice he'd given that had sent Jahir offworld, his following, the wet epidemic, everything. She listened with all the grave attention familiar from his first memories of childhood until he'd exorcised it all, and when he was done he looked up at her. "That's it, Dami. That's everything." And then, unable to help it, "Did I do all right?"
She smiled across stars and said, "Love, you did wonderful."
Vasiht'h sighed and couldn't help a chuckle. "Twenty-four years old—more or less, given all this flying across worlds—and it still feels good to hear my mother tell me I've been good."
"Maybe so," she said. "But you're not a child anymore, Vasiht'h."
Something in her voice made him look up at her.
"You've been searching for yourself for a while," she said. "And when I looked at you, I still saw the little boy I had to take care of, to watch out for. Now I see a young man who's found his center. You crossed the threshold, heart." Her smile became merrier. "Not that I'm giving up the prerogative of worrying about you, and still thinking of you as the little boy I had to help pick burrs from between his toes. But I think I can relax a little now. You're finally on your way."
"And you can tell that from all the way over there?" he asked, teasing only a little.
"Oh love." She shook her head. "You should see yourself. If you could, you'd know how I knew." Such a tender smile. "You look happy."
After the call, Vasiht'h looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Did he look happy? He canted his head, searching his eyes. All he saw was himself... and wasn't that the point. I decided to make decisions about my own destiny, he thought. And become the actor in my own life, instead of floundering around until something happened. I guess that's the difference between just keeping your head above water and actually swimming for shore.
He smiled and jogged to the kitchen, and when he left he took the "kitchen table" paper with him.
Chapter 26
The table came first. Then another rug. Chairs, a rack for firewood. Floor pillows for the species that found chairs difficult.
Schooling became routine. He and Vasiht'h settled into their classes. Jahir took the chemistry classes KindlesFlame okayed, enough to give Vasiht'h the odd occasional dream of molecular diagrams. Vasiht'h gave his attention fully to his ethics and legal classes, and let the material bleed back over the mindline, knowing Jahir would be sitting through those lectures himself come the following semester. And his friend gradually put back the weight he'd lost to Selnor, filled the cadaverous hollows between his ribs and the tendons on the backs of his hands, became again a sight that turned faces for better reasons.
"Is it hard?" Vasiht'h asked one day, pouring himself a freshly cooked cup of kerinne.
"What part?" was the absent reply. His partner was sitting at their kitchen table—their table, Vasiht'h thought, pleased, not Jahir's—going through the material for his approaching midterms; the mindline whispered of pharmacokinetic variability and membrane permeability and other terms that floated, accreting context.
"Any of it," Vasiht'h said. He went through the cabinets and came down with a can of black tea. Setting a kettle to boil, he continued, "I wasn't sure how you'd be doing, coming into the semester partway. You had so much trouble the first year."
"I did, didn't I?" Jahir sat back, pen loose in his hand. He still wrote as many notes long-hand as he took on tablet. Vasiht'h never tired of watching that unlikely calligraphy come from something as simple and cheap as a modern pen. "But that was before I had lived here, and lived through quite so much. I think the process the children began, Selnor finished."
Vasiht'h couldn't help his wariness; they were not so far from the experience for him to be sanguine about the memories.
Jahir lifted a hand, just a touch, his smile pained. "I know." He gathered himself, then continued. "I did not spend much time there, but what time I did was... very intense. And thou
gh the memories aren't clear, I know things I would have thought would not have caught. If that makes sense?"
Through the mindline, Vasiht'h saw a flash of readings gathered during triage, passing patients through. Races in all their biological idiosyncrasy, now indelibly burned into the memory of someone who'd never so much as seen an alien three years ago. An ability to glance at a halo-arch and know instantly whether the person beneath it was thriving or dying... and if the details were not yet socketed in place, there was a framework for them to hang on, and it was increasingly easy to add to that framework.
"It's easier," Jahir said again. And looked at the cup of tea that appeared before him with a surprise that tasted like pepper in Vasiht'h's mouth. "I... did not know that I wanted tea."
"You don't want coffee," Vasiht'h said. "And you don't want kerinne. But you do want a stimulant, which rules out cider and hot chocolate. I guessed."
Jahir sipped, closed his eyes. Chuckled, quiet. "You guess well."
"I know you," Vasiht'h said. "Selnor was like that for me too. Everything that went before, crystallized."
"And now you read me like I read a halo-arch?" Jahir asked, but if the mindline was right, the thought amused him, pleased him.
Vasiht'h grinned. "Oh, there are plenty of mysteries left, don't worry. But something as simple as whether you want tea or hot chocolate, that I can manage."
"Sometimes it is the simple things that are the most revealing," Jahir said. And then, thoughtful, "Shall we entertain for the holidays?"
"I thought that's why we got the big apartment?"
"I mean... entertain," Jahir said, and that came with the image of not just their quadmates, but teachers and staff, people from All Children's—including the girls, if they were well enough—all moving through a warmly lit scene enshrouded in evergreen garlands.
"Oh!" Vasiht'h said, heart leaping. How long had it been since he'd had a real party? His family gatherings at home were enormous. "Yes. Yes, I think that's a great idea. But let's pass our exams before we start inviting our faculty advisors to dinner...!"
Mindline Page 25
