by Amy Thomson
Bruce looked thoughtful for a minute, “You promise you won’t do anything to me?”
“You have my word as an enkar,” Ukatonen reassured him.
“Well, this was going to be my last trip out, anyway. I may never have another chance. Let’s do it.”
They pushed the beds together and sat in a circle. Moki showed Bruce how to hold his arms.
“It’ll sting a little bit when the spurs pierce your skin,” he warned.
Bruce nodded. “Go ahead. I’m ready.”
Moki could feel Bruce’s fear and anxiety as he entered the link. He and Ukatonen waited while Bruce got his bearings. Then Ukatonen slowly and gently began infiltrating the link with calmness and a sense of well-being.
The enkar waited until Bruce was deeply relaxed, then set to work. Moki could feel Ukatonen working on his throat, thickening his new vocal cords, changing the shape of his palate, and enlarging the resonating chambers in his sinuses. He followed Ukatonen’s work closely. Soon he would have to monitor Ukatonen as the enkar worked on himself.
Ukatonen broke the link, and asked Moki to talk.
“Iz bedder,” Moki told him aloud. His voice was smoother-sounding now, less buzzy and more resonant.
Ukatonen nodded, “Now me,” he said, holding out his arms for a link.
“Are you sure, en?”
“You can do this, Moki. Just stay calm and focused.”
Moki gripped Ukatonen’s arms and the two of them plunged into the link. Ukatonen worked swiftly and well on his own sinuses, tongue, and palate. Then, he began altering his vocal cords. This was the dangerous part. Gradually, he reshaped the flaps of tissue, making them longer and wider. He was nearly finished when one of his newly enlarged vocal cords slid across the other, effectively blocking the airway. It opened as he breathed out, but flapped shut again as he inhaled.
Moki immediately began feeding the enkar as much oxygen as he could through his allu, breathing deeply and hard while Ukatonen worked feverishly to reopen his throat. At last Moki intervened, forcing an opening that undid all of Ukatonen’s work but opened the enkar’s airway. Air began flowing back into his lungs. The crisis was over.
Ukatonen rested for a moment. Then he methodically repaired his vocal cords. There was one terrifying moment when the enkar’s throat almost closed again, but much to Mold’s relief Ukatonen managed to stop it without his intervention. After that, everything went smoothly, but it seemed to Moki as though an eternity passed before Ukatonen broke the link.
“You did well, Moki,” Ukatonen told him in skin speech. “I was proud of you for keeping your head.”
Moki shook his head. “Thank you, en. I’m sorry that I made you redo your work.”
“If you hadn’t acted when you did,” Ukatonen said, “I would have died.”
Moki shrugged. “I’m glad we’re done.”
Ukatonen rippled agreement. “We may have to make some small adjustments, but nothing as major as that one.”
“Are you all right?” Bruce asked. “Your breathing went all funny for a couple of moments. I was starting to get worried.”
“Ahm ohkeh,” Ukatonen said aloud. “ ’An oo unner-sand mmmee?”
“I’m okay. Can you understand me?” Bruce repeated.
Ukatonen nodded and tried again. The words were clearer this time.
“That’s pretty good!” Bruce said encouragingly.
“It’s a beginning,” the enkar said in Standard skin speech. “With your help we will improve quickly.”
Moki and Ukatonen had a quick snack of fruit juice and sugar. Then, their reserves replenished, they linked with Bruce. They had him speak while they monitored his lips, tongue, and throat.
“Now you try it,” Bruce said after they broke the link.
“Hello, how are you?” the two Tendu chorused.
Bruce laughed, “You sound exactly like me.”
“Thank you,” Ukatonen said aloud. “You were our”– he paused, searching for the word—“the thing you use to make copies of a shape,” he continued in Standard skin speech.
“Template,” Bruce supplied. “I was your template.”
’Tem– temblate, tempuhlate,” Ukatonen repeated. “You say it now, Moki,” he encouraged in skin speech.
Moki got it on the second try.
“Very good,” Bruce told them. “You need more practice, but by the time of the meeting on Tuesday you should be able to talk well enough to be understood.” He grinned. “I wish I could be there to see the look on Juna’s face when she hears you.”
* * *
Juna, Moki, and Ukatonen filed into the meeting room. Juna noticed that Moki looked unusually excited about something, but just as she was about to question him, Don and Jennifer arrived.
“I’m sorry we’re late,” Don said. “It took us a bit longer than I expected to find the necessary reports.”
“That’s all right,” Juna assured him, pleased that for once she and the Tendu were on time and the others a bit late.
“We need to prepare Moki and Ukatonen for life among humanity,” she said when everyone was settled. “The first thing we should do is list the potential problems that they might encounter when we arrive, and then decide which are the most serious.”
“Well,” Don said, “we’ve already dealt with the problem of nudity. I think our next problem is communication. We need to make it easier for people to understand Moki and Ukatonen when they use written Standard skin speech.”
“No, you won’d. Moki and I are learning do speak like you,” Ukatonen said.
“I’m sorry, what did you– ” Juna began, and then stopped as she realized that Ukatonen had just spoken aloud.
Don and Jennifer were staring open-mouthed at the enkar.
“You can talk!” Juna exclaimed. “How– ”
“We linked,” Moki explained, also speaking aloud. Pink lightning flickers of excitement cut across blue and green ripples of laughter on Mold’s skin. He was clearly enjoying his surprise. “Ukadonen changed me; then I helped Ukadonen change. Bruce helped us learn do puh-puhro– ” Juna watched him struggle with a difficult word.
“Bruce showed uz how do zay de words,” Ukatonen explained.
“Moki, Ukatonen, this is amazing. I guess we’ve solved your communication problems.”
“We need help,” Moki said. “We don’d know many words.”
“Perhaps Bruce could continue helping us,” Ukatonen suggested in skin speech. “We enjoyed working with him.”
“That’s a good idea,” Juna said. She was pleased that they’d found something for Bruce to do. She had noticed that he was becoming bored and restless lately. A shared task like this might help their relationship last until they reached Earth. Juna sighed inwardly. She longed for something more permanent than these shipboard relationships.
“…perhaps we might want someone with a little more experience in linguistics or speech therapy,” Dr. Maass was saying. This was no time to be daydreaming, Juna told herself sternly. Her first responsibility was to Moki and Ukatonen.
“That won’t be necessary, Dr. Maass,” Ukatonen replied falling back into skin speech. “All we require is a native speaker of Standard to provide a template for our own speech.”
“There’s no point in worrying about this unless we have a competent speech therapist on board,” Juna pointed out.
“I studied and trained as a speech therapist,” Jennifer said. She lowered her eyes, blushing. “I was planning on using it as a fallback career if I couldn’t find a job in my major. I’d be happy to work with Crewman Bowles and the Tendu to help smooth out any vocal irregularities or other difficulties.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to have someone with some formal training helping out,” Juna said.
“Would you be willing to link with us?” Ukatonen asked. “By feeling how you speak, we can learn faster.”
“I-I can’t. It’s against regulations,” Jennifer said, looking at Dr. Maass.
“No one on
board ship is allowed to link with the Tendu,” Dr. Maass explained. “Even Juna is forbidden to link with you.” He sighed and looked up at Ukatonen and Moki. “I know it makes things a lot more difficult. I wish the regulations weren’t so rigid. Perhaps you can convince them to change the rules when we reach Earth, but for now”—he held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness—“those are the rules, and I’m afraid that we have to abide by them.”
Juna frowned at the ceiling. I’m getting very tired of the Survey’s fondness for rules, she thought sourly.
“I don’t understand,” Ukatonen said. “If none of you agree with this prohibition on linking, why do you obey it?”
“Because that’s what the Survey says we’re supposed to do,” Dr. Maass told him. “That’s what the rules are.”
“Who made those rules?” Moki asked.
“They came from the central Survey office, on Earth.” Dr. Maass replied. “They were part of our original mission orders.”
“So you are following rules made by people who have never been to our planet or met any of my people,” Ukatonen said.
Dr. Maass nodded.
“The enkar are trusted to make their decisions based on the situation at hand. Why do your people do things so differently?” Ukatonen demanded.
Juna glanced down at the table. “The Survey is based on a military pattern, where control and command are centralized. It’s easier to make rapid decisions involving large numbers of people that way. In this case, the Survey hierarchy and, I suppose, the Security Council are more concerned with matters of intelligence and security. They’re afraid of you.”
“Why?” Ukatonen asked.
“Because you’re different. Because you’re strange, and because of this.” She held her arms out as though for allu-a.
“They’re afraid of linking?” Moki asked.
“Not of linking, Moki, but of what you can do with it. The potential of allu-a is tremendous. It frightens them.” She shrugged. “It frightens me, too, a little bit, and I know and trust you. They know linking changes people. They’re afraid to trust people who have linked.”
“But that’s crazy!” Moki exclaimed, puzzled. “You’re still you, even after years of linking.”
“No, Moki, I’m not,” she told him. “I’m a different person after all my time with the Tendu. Allu-a was a part of that change, a big part. I’m no threat to the security of humanity, but I do think differently than I did before. Because I’ve changed, the Survey isn’t sure they can trust me. But they still need me. Without me, there is no link between our people. Without me, there is no trust.”
Ukatonen reached out and brushed her hand affectionately with his knuckles. “You are wrong, Eerin,” he told her. “It takes two people to trust. There is no trust without us.” He looked at Dr. Maass and Jennifer. “Jennifer may help us without linking, but it will take us many months to learn to speak properly if we are not allowed to link. We do not have that time to waste.”
With that, Ukatonen rose and headed for the door, followed by Moki. Juna went with them. There was nothing more to say. All of them knew that the Survey’s protocols were worse than useless. Don and Jennifer had made their token protest, and that would be the end of it. The real Survey brass back on Earth would not be nearly so easy to deal with.
Much to Ukatonen’s relief, Don and Jennifer avoided noticing Brace’s linking with the two Tendu. Jennifer spent several hours each day drilling the two of them on pronunciation, projection, and tonality.
Initially, Ukatonen doubted that Jennifer would be any help at all, but he soon realized her suggestions were useful. Gradually, their voices acquired depth and resonance, and their pronunciation became more accurate. In addition, their voices began to reflect their personalities. Each day Moki sounded more like an inquisitive, mischievous, and lighthearted child. Ukatonen’s voice acquired authority and dignity.
There was still an alien timbre to their voices. They would never be mistaken for human. It bothered him at first. Ukatonen had wanted to sound completely human, but Jennifer and Eerin convinced him that sounding different made their voices more memorable and distinctive.
In the three months it took to reach the jump point, the two Tendu learned to be comfortable with speaking aloud. The crew made a game of teaching them new words. Moki complained that his head was going to burst. Even Uka-tonen felt inundated by the flood of words, though he hid it well.
He was grateful for the language lessons, though. They distracted him from the toll that the monotonous and barren environment of the ship was taking on him. He was grateful when the jump day arrived. It meant that there were only a couple of months more to go before they got to Earth.
“I’m looking forward to the jump,” Ukatonen remarked to Moki. “It will be good to be moving toward Earth instead of away from Tiangi.” Regret fluttered over his skin like windblown mist. “I need a world around me again. The garden is nice, but it isn’t enough.”
Each day the ship seemed smaller, colder, and more barren. The bright lights hurt his eyes and the dry air clawed at his lungs. He longed for greenness and moisture and a sense of concealment. Some days it was all he could do to leave the warm, moist den of his bed and face another day in this sterile environment.
Moki nodded agreement. “I want to feel the wind on my skin again. It’s been so long,” he said, his skin blue-grey with yearning.
“There’s still two and a half more months to go,” Ukatonen reminded him. “I will be glad when we finally get off this dead ship and feel living air on our skins again.”
Eerin stuck her head in the door. “Commander Sussman tells me that we’re going to have to strap in for the jump in about forty minutes. We should go to the lounge now. Is all your stuff secured?”
Moki told her it was. They had spent the morning making sure that every loose item in their cabin was stowed safely in locked drawers. Eerin double-checked everything.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Ukatonen hauled himself up off the bed and followed Moki to the observation deck for a last look at Tiangi.
Every day it seemed harder to find the energy to leave his cabin. It wasn’t a physical ailment; he was just losing interest in his surroundings.
When they reached the observation deck, they saw that the protective shielding on the aft window had been lifted back, revealing a sky strewn with hard, untwinkling stars. Their sun was a bright bead of light set against the blackness, larger than the other stars but still impossibly distant.
“There,” Eerin said, pointing. “There’s Tiangi. The blue star, to the right of your sun.”
Ukatonen followed her pointing finger. His world was a bright blue speck of light, lost among the millions of stars. He felt awed by how far he had come.
“Who could believe that so big a world as ours could be so tiny, just a spot of light?” Ukatonen murmured. He looked away from the window, overwhelmed by sudden sadness.
Moki touched him on the shoulder. “Who could believe that the universe is so large?” he said. “And that there is so much in it still to learn?”
Ukatonen looked down at Moki and nodded. “You’re right,” he agreed, looking back out the window. But in his heart, there was no optimism. There was only the desperate need to get off the ship and onto a living world again.
He stood looking at the window full of bright stars for another long moment, longing for the warmth and familiarity of home. Then the massive shielding slid over the window like the closing of a giant eye, and it was time to strap in for the jump.
Two
The alarm beeped insistently. Ukatonen slowly opened his eyes and rolled over, his skin a pale, cloudy yellow. It was time to get up. Time for another day of fussing over that inadequate garden, one more day of forcing his brain to learn more human sound speech. It all seemed so meaningless. He reached a long arm out and fumbled with the clock until it stopped beeping, then tossed the thing across the room, and rolled over and went back to
sleep, grateful that Moki was spending the night in Eerin’s cabin.
“En?” It was Moki. “Wake up, en, it’s past noon, en.”
“I’m tired, Moki. Go away.”
“But, en, you’ve been asleep since right after dinner last night.”
“And I’m not ready to get up yet,” Ukatonen replied. “Go away and let me rest.” He pulled the covers up over his head and went back to sleep. He barely heard the door hiss shut as Moki left the room.
“Ukatonen?” Eerin said. “I brought you some soup, en. You should eat. Please, en, wake up and eat something.”
Ukatonen hauled himself upright and took the steaming bowl of hot soup. Soup was one of the humans’ better inventions. It made him feel warm, and the steam of it eased his tortured sinuses. He drank it down, slurping up the noodles.
“Thank you,” he said, handing Eerin the bowl and sliding under the covers again.
“It’s my pleasure, en,” Eerin told him. “Would you like the doctor to come and look at you.”
“I’m not sick,” Ukatonen told her. “I’m just tired. I don’t want to get up.”
“Forgive me, en, but I think it’s more than that. I think you’re depressed.”
Ukatonen shrugged and looked away. “I’m tired of being too dry and too cold. I’m tired of everyone shoving words into my ears. I’m tired of making do with that tiny garden. I’ve been pushing myself ever since we left Tiangi. We’ll be arriving at Earth in another couple of weeks. I need some time to rest before then.”
“All right, en,” Eerin said. “But Moki’s been worrying over you all day. I’m worried that he’s fretting himself into a decline.”
“He’s your bami, Eerin. Link with him. Cheer him up.”
“Yes, en,” she said. “I will leave you to rest.” She picked up the bowl, and the door slid shut behind her as she left.
Ukatonen’s eyes slid closed again. It was good to rest, here in this warm, dark room where he could pretend that he was safe on Tiangi again. He would get up when he was ready, and not before.
The door hissed shut behind Juna as she emerged from Ukatonen’s cabin, a worried look on her face.
