Not for Use in Navigation

by Iona Datt Sharma

  He opens his eyes at that, glances at her quickly, but doesn’t say she should leave. “Thanks for this," he says, after a moment, gesturing gently with the cup. With some interest, he adds, “I thought… well. I thought Signans weren’t too good with this" – he taps the side of his head – “sort of thing."

  “Historically, they were not." Senchai thinks about that, and drinks more of the lemon water. "People with illnesses of the mind were feared. For... what they might do." She makes the gesture with third finger and thumb in conjunction, to avoid saying it: it is not right to use the word around a person already upset. “What you mistranslate as magic."

  "Ah," Nick says, and she admires his wry, lawyer's intelligence, evident even here on the floor in the dust. "A little bit of paranoia in the wrong person, then crash bang boom."

  "Yes. It is thought," she goes on, slowly, "that this is why such illnesses are not common, with us. The genetic component to the condition has long since been" - she pauses, delicately - "eradicated."

  "Ah," Nick says, again. "Well, that’s… terrifying."

  His voice is still wry, but he seems to shrink for a moment, pressing further against the wall. It takes Senchai another minute to perceive the disjunct in their understanding. "Do not think it was not a terrible thing," she says, quickly. "The worst of things. If someone were to threaten you for your illness, I would pick up that thing there" - she points to the purple shrub with its spiked leaves and twigs - "and make your defence."

  Nick laughs, shakily. "I believe you would, Senchai. And then bring an action for the damage inflicted on your property by their face."

  "Sometimes that is necessary," she says, primly, because she thinks it will make him laugh again. It does, a little, and she leans back against the wall in unconscious echo of him, enjoying the warmth of the cup.

  “Senchai," Nick says after a while, “may I ask you a personal question?"

  She considers. “Yes," she says, “like for like."

  “That’s the Signan way." Nick nods. “You and me, we look similar on the outside, but inside we’re completely different, right? I guess I don’t mean you and me, I mean, humans and Signans. We’re different. Different species. But you… you’re half-Signan and half human. Is that because of the" - he made the hand gesture - “signene? I’m sorry to use the word, if it offends you."

  “It does not offend me," Senchai says, calm. “Electricity will create an arc across space, to complete a circuit; so it is with us. When the physical things of the world are not enough, the signene will fill that space."

  “Equity sees as done what ought to be done," Nick says, and she nods, pleased with the analogy.

  “Quite. So it is with us; so it is with me."

  “Can’t have been a lot of people like you around, when you were growing up," he says. “Guess you spent a lot of time alone."

  “Quite," Senchai said, irritated at the softening of his expression.

  “It’s okay," he says, and she resists the urge to ask him, indignantly, why he is suddenly consoling her. “It’s okay. Chrissie and me - we can learn to be quiet." He looks up at her, his eyes bright and his hands shaking.

  “Like for like," she says, sharply: that’s the Signan way. For every secret given and every confidence demanded, an equal and opposite reaction. “Nick. Are you taking your medication?"

  His head snaps up, eyes bright with anger for a moment, then swiftly fading. He glances up at her again, and down at his feet; it takes him a moment, but he is a good lawyer and he knows the rules. “I just, I saw it," he mutters, “and I thought, what can I do, I can do pro bono, but I did that before, Senchai, I did that before a planet got obliterated. And they were saying can you do with a little less. Can you manage without the full dose? And I thought I’ve been medicated half my life. They’ve got plenty to be anxious about right now."

  “You self-sacrificing idiot," Senchai says, and is alarmed at the degree of fondness that has come into her voice. “Nick, the evening listing will begin soon. Are you ready?"

  “It’s my job to be," he says, and it’s hers, too, so she gets up to return to her desk. But she touches his shoulder briefly, and catches the flash of his smile.

  ___

  "Next. Nizramuddin of 47 Piscium, now Nazer. Advocate, Nicholas Campbell, whose mothers called him Nick." A pause; Senchai wonders if the judge is going to offer a comment on Nick's earlier performance, but the pause lengthens into nothingness and the moment passes.

  "I had only one mother," Nick says, ironically, "as is more common among my people, but that is correct. May I proceed, sir?"

  "Do." The judge pauses again. "Although my clerk reports you have not, once again, provided the deeds to the land. This is a Lands Act claim, is it not, Nick?"

  The judge is matching him for ironic, and Senchai breathes in deeply, but Nick meets the judge’s eyes with equanimity. "Yes, sir. The crux of the case revolves around that particular point. My client was born on 47 Piscium to a family who had been working its land for as long as there have been humans and Signans to work its land."

  Had been, he should have said; there is a minute pause while Senchai and the whole court notice that, and then let it go.

  "The land came to my client from his mothers," Nick says. “The land came to them from theirs."

  "I understand the nature of the thing," the judge says, not unkindly. "No one demands that the refugees stopped to gather the deeds to their land as the klaxons sounded."

  Nick nods, and Senchai shakes her head, for some people did do just that. When the first family stumbled into the office with their arms full of crackling yellowed paper, she remembers that she took a long look around the room, wondering what she would take, should the planet-wide alarms start blaring at that very moment and pull her world from beneath her. She looked, and did not decide.

  "However," the judge continues, "there is the central registry of land proprietorship."

  "With respect, sir, there is not." Nick puts his hands on his hips and leans back slightly. "Land registration on 47 Piscium, as here, recorded transfers, assignments and mortgages of land. When my client's ancestors arrived on 47 Piscium all those scores of years ago, they made landfall on what would be their own land. Their own land: never for value given; never in other hands."

  Senchai can see the anxiety in his wringing hands, but Nick’s voice is steady.

  "And now, if you'll forgive me for a moment," Nick says, and Senchai follows his gaze away from the judge to Chrissie and the clerk, struggling slightly with their burden of a giant purplish shrub, dropping foliage in a long trail behind them. Others seated on the ground shuffle rapidly out of their way to let them pass, and the judge looks on as they set it down in between of him and Nick. Chrissie puts a hand on Nick's shoulder as she returns to her spot on the ground.

  "This is what my client brought," Nick says, a little dangerously. "This is what came with him in his arms from a dying world."

  "Nick," the judge began, and is perhaps about to say something familiar to Senchai's ears about human melodrama, but Nick sighs and the sound is strangely loud, even in that outdoor, quotidian space: it sounds like exhaustion, tempered with hope.

  "The water in the twigs and leaves has been replaced by ours," he says. “The rest endures."

  He bows, and straightens, and it’s over. Nick’s breathing is coming rapidly when he sits down next to Senchai, and there is a slightly jerky cast to his movements, but somehow Senchai isn’t surprised when the judge grants the application for land for the client, despite the lack of deeds. “It is held," he says, “to be within the spirit of the Acts."

  Later, Senchai, Nick and Chrissie walk quietly along the shady road, winding beneath the canopies of other trees.

  "Signene," Senchai says, after a while, making the gesture with her eyes on Nick. "What could not be done, has been done."

  "I'm human, Senchai," Nick says, tiredly. "I don't think that's how it works."

  "You have been here some tim
e," she says. "You will become like us." Tentatively, looking around for passers-by, she makes the sign again, fingers curled into thumb, and places it against his skin, at the hollow at the base of his collarbones. Too late she remembers his anxiety and that perhaps he might not wish to be touched, but his eyes on her are calm and kind, not unhappy, as though he understands it’s a blessing. He holds her gaze for a moment, and then she takes her hand away.

  "We should eat before we head back," Chrissie says with determination. "It's getting late."

  Senchai nods in return. The light of explosion from 47 Piscium took time to cross space, so for a few minutes, it existed as it did before, peaceful in the night sky. Perhaps, she’s thinking, this is the same thing: shocks and sudden tears taking their time to reverberate through the ground. Perhaps if they eat together, and take their time over the meal, there will be no more time, tonight at least, for solitude, and sorrow.

  "My treat," Nick says. "Somewhere quiet."

  Senchai smiles at that. They keep walking, beneath the trees, beneath the cooling evening sky.

  Flightcraft

  She's started to get post through the door now, circulars, letters from the local council, bills, all addressed to Talitha Cawthorne. That was the name she gave the gas board, when she moved in, and the water board, and the name she gave to the lex-engineer who needed it for the new telephone connection, and it was the name on her birth certificate, once.

  "Lovely old-fashioned name, Talitha," her landlady said, when she signed the lease. "Arise, little girl, arise? I used to know my divinity, a long time ago. Although I suppose people call you Tali."

  "Yes," she said, because that was true, or at least, she remembered being called that, years ago; she wondered if she'd still turn around at the sound of it. "Thank you. Perhaps you can direct me to the nearest grocer's?"

  It wasn't far, up on the road towards the airbase. And now this is her third weekly shopping expedition, picking up eggs, bread, Heinz tinned soup, cheese. She leaves the bicycle leaning against a railing – Downham is safe as houses, the estate agent has said – and walks along the road from the little grocer's, past a bookshop with law and lex textbooks in the window, up to a café with a row of tables by the window. There are a couple of other customers: a woman gesturing wildly at the chalkboard menu, and a man moping into a coffee cup the size of a soup bowl. She sips her own drink and looks up at the little biplane rising and circling from the base, diving, looping the loop. She knows the place used to be RAF Downham – it's been in civilian control only a few months – but it seems to have held on to its skilled craftspeople: the plane corners and turns with eerie, tight precision. And perhaps, she's thinking, drinking in a little self-awareness with her tea, it's why she's here, after all. She could have gone anywhere, but she's come to a place where they still fly.

  The woman at the counter has stopped gesticulating and is now crossing the floor with another soup-bowl coffee cup and a plate of biscuits balanced precariously on a tray. Talitha frowns, looking at all the chairs that she'll have to avoid tripping over, gets up and says, "Can I help you with" – and then it's too late.

  "Shit!" the woman yells, stumbling against the table. The hot liquid makes a boiling arc above, and Talitha's mind works overtime – Scottish, from the voice; probably demobbed, to be yelling profanity in public places; possibly stationed at the base here in the town? – before she notices the coffee has slopped over the table edge, soaking into her shopping bag. "Oh, I'm so sorry," the woman says, reaching down to pick up the things spilling out across the floor. The liquid has got into the soup tins so the paper wrapping is coming away, the ink on the inside of the labels blurring into featureless smudges. The metal is visibly tarnishing and the woman groans. "So sorry, I'm going to make your soup go off. Look - what's your name?"

  Talitha takes a breath. "Talitha."

  "Look, Talitha, give us your napkin, will you?"

  Talitha gives it to her. The Scottish woman pulls a soft pencil from her pocket with hands that are covered in inkstains. Working quickly, she sketches a sequence of symbols on the napkin and hands it back to Talitha. "Quick patch," she says. "When you get home wrap it round the tins with an elastic band, it'll do the trick. I really am sorry. I've lost my assistant at work, everything's at sixes and sevens, it's a wonder I can keep my head screwed on, but that should fix it."

  Talitha inspects the napkin, folds it carefully and puts it away in her pocket. "Thank you, ah..."

  "Cat. Catriona McDonald." She looks up at the big wall clock and hisses through her teeth. "Shit, shit, I'm late! Nice meeting you. Sorry!"

  She flies out of the café, leaping over a cardboard box in the way of the door and disappears in a flash of movement crossing the glass. Surprising herself, Talitha laughs. She finishes her drink, picks up her bags, lets her hand close on the napkin in her pocket, and starts on the walk home.

  ___

  Cat thuds into the hangar, slams her coffee down, finger-combs her hair and gets her breath back just in time for the outside door to swing open. She looks up, hoping she's giving the impression of calm competence, and says, "Audrey Knapp?"

  "Yes. A pleasure to meet you." Her new client reaches out for a handshake and Cat winces at the amount of ink on her hands. But Mrs Knapp turns over her palms, inspects them with interest and no displeasure, and Cat thinks perhaps she, like Cat herself, considers the stains honourable badges of the trade.

  "Catriona McDonald," she says, a little belatedly. "We've corresponded."

  "Of course, Miss McDonald." Mrs Knapp smiles at her, but her eyes are on the great structure behind them, the glowing bronzed surfaces of the metal. When she seems to recollect Cat's presence and turns, she's distracted again: this time by the coiled scrolls on Cat's beautiful carved oak desk, the mess of discarded brushes.

  "Perhaps you'll call me Catriona," Cat says, smiling. "Or Cat, everyone does."

  "Then you must call me Audrey." Mrs Knapp finally drags her gaze back to Cat and smiles back. "Tell me how this is going to work. You said you'd figured out a new method of lexical locomotion – can you explain, please?"

  "With pleasure." With sudden decision, Cat walks to the back of the workshop so the whole scene is spread out in front of them. The prototype craft dominates the space in its struts. "You know, of course," Cat says, "that I'm used to working with smaller aircraft. Biplanes, mostly." Almost unconsciously, she looks up to the giant hook in the roof from which they are hung, and the old Moth they’re using as a model. "You've seen the wings in the process of the workings. I can have craftspeople in here eight hours a day with their brushes, painting the lettering on the outer surfaces. I suppose if there were no need for that, we could use something other than canvas for the wings."

  Audrey nods. "But she's going somewhere where canvas won't cut it, I'm afraid."

  Not for the first time, Cat wonders what is taking her on this journey – this middle-aged woman of no particular background, deciding suddenly to cross oceans by air and devoting a large portion of her not-inconsiderable resources towards it. Looking at her, Audrey seems to guess what she's thinking. "Peacetime doesn't agree with me," she says, with a studied lightness. "My former husband departed in search of a quiet life." She gives Cat a small, conspiratorial smile. "Now tell me how we're doing this."

  "It occurred to me," Cat says, "that you don't have to see the lettering, even on an aircraft – it's just how we happen to do it. Now, if you take the heavy paper" – she points at the burgeoning scrolls on her desk – "and load it safely into the skin of the vessel, for example in the vacuum spaces between the layers of plating, then..."

  Audrey smiles. "I understand."

  She starts forwards, going to inspect the work, and Cat hangs back to wait for her verdict. Suddenly, a voice pipes up: "How do the letters make it go, then?"

  Cat turns to the stranger coming inside from the rain. "Hello?"

  "I'm Toby," he chirps – a boy, not quite a young man. "That's m'mum over there.
How does it work?"

  Cat is thrown off balance for a moment. She considers, then draws a piece of paper towards her. Quickly, she sketches a basic form, and the paper crumples in her hand, becomes a folded swan.

  She hands it over to Toby, who accepts it joyfully. "Wow! That's brilliant! How did you do that?"

  "It's like mathematics," Cat says. "Once it's written, it can't not be true. See?" She takes the swan back and adds a descending stroke to the character on the neck. It takes flight and flutters around Toby's head.

  "Brilliant!" Toby says again. "Do you think I could learn how to do that?"

  Cat inclines her head. "Possibly. In earlier days I'd have said you were too old – I started learning when I was twelve." She smiles at the memory. "But the war has turned everything topsy-turvy. If you have the talent, you could be teachable."

  Toby is delighted. "Can you show me now?"

  Cat grins. "That's not quite how it works. But sit down over there and I'll see what I can do."

  He sits down obediently at the empty desk and she gives him the first exercise from memory. It's no struggle, to remember being twelve years old with a sharp pen in her hand, sketching open and close and open and close, making a child's four-fingered fortune teller with the concentration of a chartered craftswoman working on a de Havilland.

  "That's kind of you," Audrey says softly, and Cat startles; she hadn't noticed Audrey stepping back from her aircraft. "Sure he's not in anyone's way?"

  "He's not," Cat says. The base at Downham is filled with junior craftspeople, but Cat's own assistant and right-hand man left her service only a week earlier to return to civilian life. Cat explained in vain that they were no longer RAF Downham; they were civilian lexical engineers working on civilian aircraft. "Not good enough," he said, and departed for a life presumably connecting telephone lines or mass-producing Fords or some such thing. She knows in her heart it's wrong to blame him; she had been feeling it herself in those latter days, the grief and weight of seeing their craft become a part of the government war machine. "I'll need to recruit someone new at some point, I suppose, but right now it's an empty desk."