“This dance is simple. I will teach you.” He pulled the sling over his head, taking care not to wake his daughter, and gave her an empathic caress before leaving her cradled in the nurse’s arms. “Come,” he said, as he turned toward the circle dance.
The steps were, as he had said, simple, and Marianne danced with enthusiasm after a few repetitions. When she needed no further instruction, he gave himself up to the dance, relishing the rare opportunity to interact with ordinary Suralians.
<<>>
Marianne lounged in a garden gazebo, savoring the crispness in the air from the approaching autumn. The graceful pavilions in the garden had become her favorite place to spend time when she was not engaged with Kyza. The Sural had joined her to continue a discussion begun over the morning meal. Discussion finished, they had fallen silent, listening to the flutters singing and chattering in the cora trees.
The Sural lifted an eyebrow and gave her the penetrating look she’d found so unnerving when she first arrived. “What were you reading when I joined you?” he asked. In English. His accent sounded like a cross between Scandinavian and New Mandarin.
Her eyebrows tried to meet her hairline. “You speak English?” she exclaimed.
One side of his mouth tilted upward.
“When did you learn English?”
“The winter after your people first made contact with us.”
“How did you learn it?”
“The Terosha were happy to teach us,” he said. “Just as they were happy to teach our language to humans.”
“Well,” Marianne said. “Well.” She blinked and opened her mouth again, but no other word came. She closed her mouth with a huff.
“Read to me from your tablet,” he said. “One of your poets.”
She spent another moment huffing at him, then at random chose a twenty-second century English poet, Gaidon Damerell, known for his exquisite sonnets about love and nature. The Sural leaned back against the gazebo, eyes closed and long legs stretched before him, listening with a small smile on his lips.
As she read, Marianne tried to stick to Damerell’s poems about nature. Reading a love sonnet to the Sural seemed inappropriate, so she skipped them. When she stumbled into one that began on a pastoral theme but turned erotic, her voice hitched, and he opened an eye, his face impassive.
“What do you find disturbing?” he asked.
Blood rushed to her face. “It’s... um... it’s not appropriate,” she stammered. “Not by human ethics. To, uh, discuss intimate topics with—with an employer. Or someone from a much different social class.”
His eyes glinted. “Compared to my people’s love poems, that was chaste.”
“I would be more comfortable if you permitted me to choose another.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Proceed as you like.”
<<>>
In the autumn, Kyza turned into a noisy, grabby toddler who followed Marianne around the stronghold, chattering and babbling, switching from one language to another: the human languages Marianne had come to teach and the Sural’s own dialect of Tolari. Marianne wondered if the tot believed she was her mother, but it was also obvious she adored her father. She preferred him to anyone else present, begging to be carried, rubbing her forehead on his cheek, crawling all over him when he sat. He tolerated it all—more than tolerated it, seemed to revel in it. He was gentle and patient with his active, curious daughter.
Winter brought treacherous temperatures, putting an end to time in the garden and, indeed, to any movement out of doors. Marianne’s usual haunt moved to the guest wing common room, which contained a small library. Not all the books on the shelves were in the Sural’s dialect, and Marianne began to spend her free time puzzling out books written in a simple dialect close enough to Suralian for her to understand it. When she felt she had mastered the language, she gave it a try on the Sural.
He eyed her with growing amusement as she spoke, then burst into the first honest laughter she’d heard from him. Sporting a crooked grin, he composed himself and said, “You sound like a Paranian. I shall have to find some books from Detralar. Detrali is even more amusing to most Tolari.” He stifled a chuckle, his eyes sparkling.
“Why is that?” Marianne asked.
He shrugged a shoulder. “It is.”
“You have—biases—on Tolar?”
“Not in the same way that you have explained human biases,” he answered. “Racism—I do not understand this. You are all human. Your physical variations mean nothing. Culture, however—cultural differences can be quite amusing.”
It was Marianne’s turn to shrug. “We’ve tried to root racism out of ourselves for centuries. It never dies—some people even think the other races in the Trade Alliance are inferior—but it would be unfair to say we haven’t made progress.”
“Skin color, hair color, Tolari are all the same,” the Sural said, “but we find our cultural differences highly entertaining.”
“Hmm,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Does anyone find Suralia... entertaining?” she asked.
His mouth twitched. “Not while I live,” he answered.
Marianne laughed. The Sural watched her, mild amusement crossing his face.
“We do have a reputation,” he continued.
“For what?”
“Coldness.”
Marianne bit her tongue.
“Speak your thoughts, proctor.”
“Um,” she said. “I can see why.”
He cocked his head.
“I mean—well—you all walk around looking disinterested and impassive most of the time, except during your festivals. You in particular—you’re pretty emotionless.”
The Sural lifted an eyebrow. “We are what we are. But I admit the plateau is a colder place now than it was in my grandmother’s day.”
Marianne’s breath caught. “What happened to cause that?”
“The last attack. Everyone in the stronghold died.”
That explained the gloom. “Oh.” She rocked back on her heels. “Forgive me.”
He waved it away with a hand and started to pace. “You would call it two generations ago,” he said. “We have strengthened Suralia’s defenses since that day. Another such attack could not succeed.”
She bit her lip, a nasty sensation crawling up her spine, as the reality of Tolari interprovincial conflict smacked her in the face. He glanced over at her.
“Have no concern, proctor,” he added. “My enemies in the ruling caste seldom make an attempt on me now. But even could an attack succeed, an invading ruler is more likely to capture and hold you than to harm you.” He eyed her. “You are not one of us. Capture would not dishonor you.”
“That’s not comforting,” she said.
“Human worry is needless. We prepare and do what needs to be done. And what needs to be done, perhaps, is to search my personal library for books in Detrali.” He bowed, mouth twitching, and strode off.
Marianne dug into the books he brought back. It helped her mood to occupy her mind as the weather grew colder and the stronghold became entombed in ice and snow, but the dark and the cold grew pervasive and unsettling. Without the solace of the gardens and the chattering flutters, Marianne fell into a continuous gloomy mood.
She attributed it to the short days at first. The sun was in the sky for perhaps eight hours, rising after the morning meal and setting by the evening meal. After some thought, she realized she had been on Tolar for something more than a standard year, cut off from almost all contact with the ship. She had grown lonely, much to her own surprise. She’d never experienced much loneliness. School, college, and then her job as a high school teacher had kept her busy, and the social interactions of the teacher’s break room, Tuesday night bowling, and, to a lesser extent, volunteer work and language practice in the Babel cloud’s virtual parks and cafés, had fulfilled her slight needs—but none of those could be had on Tolar.
To her frustration, she couldn’t find
a way to socialize with the stronghold’s other inhabitants. Both status and rank mattered to them. No one in the keep had anything like Marianne’s combination of false rank and no status, and they didn’t know how to respond to her. She had no common ground on which to strike up a friendship with the women among the servants, guards, nurses or cooks.
The Sural may have been content to live in splendid isolation, but she felt alone and cut off. And he seemed to sense it.
“Proctor, something oppresses you,” he said, broaching the topic during the evening meal. They ate alone in the refectory.
“I’m fine,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow, waiting with his usual patience. She fiddled with her food. She looked up to find him staring at her. “Forgive me, high one,” she murmured.
He raised the other eyebrow. “For?”
“I don’t need much, but—I need more...” she stumbled.
He cocked his head. “More of what?”
“I miss—I miss just... just talking with another woman.” She winced. Talking about this made her feel naked. Taking a breath, she pressed on. “Girl talk. We—we need to talk to each other sometimes, just women. Unburden our hearts. I never realized before just how much I need it.”
He nodded, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “I understand. By limiting your contact with the ship, I have deprived you of something you need to be content.”
“I’ve always thought I didn’t need anyone. I was happy by myself in Casey, living alone. I guess I wasn’t as alone as I thought.” She fell silent, staring past him, at the dark outside the windows.
Something like compassion warmed his expression. “Very well,” he said. “For the sake of Kyza’s tutor, there shall have to be less peace in the Sural’s airwaves. You may contact your ship each day when it is in orbit.”
She turned back to him, a huge smile bursting onto her face. “Truly?” she blurted.
“Indeed. It would be best if you chose a regular hour to do so.”
“Thank you, high one,” she said, and jumped up to run off to her quarters. Hands shaking, she powered on the comms and explained her call.
“Who won the Super Six?” was her first question when Adeline Russell came on the screen.
Adeline’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s the first thing you want to know?”
Marianne nodded. “I love interplanetary pro cycling.”
“Just a second, I’ll look it up.” Adeline looked away from Marianne for a moment. “Brad Yates.”
“Yes!” Marianne exclaimed. “He looked so promising last year!”
Adeline just shook her head. “Whatever makes you happy,” she muttered.
“What about my friend Susan? Do you know if she’s… I don’t know, angry with me, for not calling?”
“You shouldn’t have told your friends you would keep in touch,” Adeline said with a frown, “but yes, she’s fine. She’s dating the Spanish teacher we sent to replace you.”
Marianne blinked. “What, really? What’s he like? Is he treating her right?”
Adeline laughed. “Relax, Marianne, he’s perfect for her, all sexy and Spanish.”
“A real Spaniard?” Marianne broke into laughter. “That’s perfect! At least he’s not the boy next door. She really didn’t want to marry him.”
Thereafter, Marianne called the ship, if it was in orbit, every morning after transmitting written reports to the Admiral and the Ambassador—if it wasn’t too late in the night, ship’s time. The ship remained in orbit for three terrestrial months at a time, then headed back to Earth for a month. When the Alexander orbited the planet, it helped Marianne keep track of Earth time. She was prone to lose track on Tolar, where the twenty-five hour days threw her off and the Tolari counted time in terms of seasons or years, if they counted it at all.
On most mornings, she chatted with Adeline, who functioned as the Ambassador’s administrative aide. When Adeline was unavailable, she chatted with the Admiral’s calm and motherly wife Laura who, though not the brightest star in the sky, was insightful and wise. Laura had children Marianne’s age and could see right through her. That was a little disconcerting, so she preferred to chat with Adeline—or Addie, as she wished to be called.
“Kyza is learning to eat at the refectory table with us,” she told Adeline on one winter morning when the temperatures in Suralia fell lower than usual. “Though all she does is climb all over the table, grabbing and chewing on her daddy’s food, while her nurses have to scramble to keep her from falling on her head.”
Adeline laughed. “She sounds indulged.”
“You could say she’s a bit spoiled,” Marianne admitted. “But the Sural doesn’t let her do anything that would bring her to harm. She’s not allowed outside the keep, however much she wants to go play in the snow. The cold out there is dangerous, even for them. Deep winter, they call it. And the glaciers are growing. They don’t make it to the stronghold plateau, but they’re close enough.”
“I see you’re wearing a Tolari robe,” Adeline teased. “You’re not going native on us, are you?”
Marianne shook her head, laughing. “It’s cold in the stronghold—well, to me anyway—and these robes are warmer than anything I brought with me.”
“Really?”
“There could be a good market for this fabric on ice worlds. Something to think about trading for, or maybe teaching them to mass produce. I don’t know what it’s made of—the Sural becomes cagey when I ask. It feels thin and lightweight, like silk, but it’s fantastically warm. I’m wearing a pair of their slippers, too, though they don’t fit right in the toe. Tolari don’t have toes.”
“What huh?”
“Imagine if the skin between your toes all fused together but the bones were still there, with the same joints. Still useful for balance because the big toe bone is the same, but less individual flexibility. They can’t bend just one part, the whole assembly flaps. And they don’t call them feet. They call them peds.”
“Huh,” Adeline said again. Marianne could see her making notes. “How’d you find this out?”
“Kyza used to pull off her slippers to suck on her peds. And chew on them too, but she stopped doing that when she started getting teeth.” Marianne grinned, remembering the surprise on Kyza’s face the first time she bit herself.
“Looks like you’re happy down there.”
“It’s tolerable,” Marianne said.
“No, you’re happy, I can tell.”
“Addie, now you’re as bad as Laura.”
Adeline laughed.
<<>>
The Sural leaned back at his desk, thrumming with satisfaction. His daughter’s tutor was happy, now that she had the social contact she required. She had emerged from her gloom and smiled her captivating smile more often. An image of that smile played across his mind’s eye, and his own lips curved of their own accord.
He shook himself. She still hid something, though she was not a trained operative. It was obvious she had been ordered to report everything she learned—he had expected Central Command to use any human they sent as a passive spy—but she lacked any covert training. No, something troubled and even pained Marianne. He could sense it when it came to the surface now and again.
On occasion, he attempted to lead her into talking about it, but when the subject turned to adolescence and relationships, she would become evasive and close down her emotions. He was convinced she had never formed an intimate attachment with another individual. In fact, she seemed to have no attraction at all to others. The Spinster Schoolmarm, he had heard her call herself, for all that she was so young by his people’s standards—twenty-eight human years was a season less than fourteen on Tolar, little more than a child on a world where the young came of age at thirteen.
His thoughts turned to Kyza. His daughter delighted all who came into contact with her. In the family wing’s privacy, he could play with her and let her laugh with abandon. He wished he could share that with Marianne, but what he did not wish the
humans on the ship to know, he could not allow her to see. It might force her into choosing between her loyalty to her people and her growing loyalty to himself, at least for the present, and it necessitated keeping his own emotions under tight control so that Kyza never displayed strong feelings when Marianne was present. He regretted the deception, but the humans had to continue believing for now that his people were cold and heartless. They would learn otherwise soon enough, but it suited his purposes to delay the revelation.
Kyza began to stir, sending tendrils of need through the parental bond he shared with her, unusual as it was for a Tolari father to be bonded to a child so young. In the normal course of their development, infants bonded to the women who bore them, regardless of whose heir they were, for their first six or seven seasons of life if they were boys and closer to ten seasons if they were girls, but the woman who mothered Kyza had died soon after giving birth. The tragedy had forced him to attempt bonding with his newborn daughter.
The leader of Suralia’s science caste, a woman of great strength and intellectual genius, had mothered Kyza. Her consent to his request for an heir represented a great honor, but he had not chosen her for high caste rank. Genetic analysis indicated she could give him an exceptional child—one who could, perhaps, survive the great trial. That had been his primary consideration—but he had not expected it to cost the woman her life.
By law, because he belonged to the ruling caste, she had lived in his stronghold while she increased, joined by her heir and her bond-partner. The same law would have required her to continue there until Kyza was ready to transfer her bond to him—had the woman lived.
He had been present, as stunned as the apothecary—who expected to save her—when the woman had succumbed to shock after suffering a massive hemorrhage during the birth. His daughter then, on instinct, tried to follow her into the dark. Shaking himself out of the empathic daze death could cause the unprepared, he had wrapped his senses around Kyza and surrounded her with love before she could shut herself down. She had struggled against him like a flutter trying to escape a net, seeking to follow the mother she knew in the womb.
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