Master of None

by N Lee Wood

  She remained silent for a moment, knowing more about his past than he was comfortable with. “Sahakharae are not prostitutes, and the kaemahjah is an honorable institution,” she said gently. “You don’t have to be sahakharae, though you might find it quite profitable. I can see where you would be popular, even without proper training.”

  “I can’t even talk to people,” he snapped, irritated. “I don’t play music, I can’t dance, I don’t know any Vanar poetry. I’m hardly going to be capable of dazzling conversation, am I? So what exactly is it I would be popular for, Yaenida?”

  She smiled. “True,” she conceded. “There are those who enjoy the kaemahjah for less refined reasons. But if not that, Nathan, the only thing left is the temple, and I seriously doubt that would suit you. Then, what will you do when you can no longer attract a wife or make a living in a kaemahjah? Without family, you’ll barely exist in some grubby charity shelter, surrounded by all the other unwanted naekulam, the mentally disturbed, the terminally ill, the disgraced husbands, all the sad misfits and surly malcontents who’ve been abandoned or expelled by their families, year after year alone, until you finally die of old age. Or just old.”

  He remained quiet, looking out over the vast green of the jungle blurring the horizon beyond the neat walls of the House. She respected his silence, closing her eyes, and leaned her head back with her face toward the sun, catlike.

  “Yaenida, let me go,” he said in a low voice, without hope. “Please. I don’t belong here. It was a mistake. Let me leave Vanar.”

  “Poor child,” she responded unsympathetically, her eyes still shut. “You can’t.”

  He hadn’t expected any different. He nodded, defeated, and stood. “Thank you for your time, jah’nari l’amae,” he said formally. She cracked her eyes to watch him, her heavily lidded eyes deceptively sleepy. “I humbly apologize for disturbing your tranquility.” He bowed from the waist, then turned away. His back rigid, he had walked halfway across the spacious room before she called out, “Nate...”

  He stopped without turning, afraid he would weep in front of her. “There might be one other possibility, should you be interested.” Relief threatened to buckle his knees, and he had to swallow hard to regain his self-control before he faced her. She was smiling: a tiny, fragile creature swathed in bright cloth huddled on the ledge.

  “It’s true your circumstances are unique and I do feel a certain, well, responsibility for your welfare. And it is quite likely my interest in you piqued Kallah’s curiosity in the first place, as much as it may have been to defy her mother. She’s a strong-willed girl, if not quite as malicious as Eraelin. The Changriti are not as...broad-minded as are the Nga’esha”—Nathan appreciated the understatement—“and this may indeed provide unexpected benefits for the Nga’esha. Yes, this could work...”

  Her thoughtful expression suddenly focused on him astutely. “I will discuss the peculiarities of your situation with Kallah in private,” she said decisively. “You will, of course, marry her, and you will take advantage of whatever time her other jealous kharvah allow you. Once you are married, fuck her every chance you get. Fuck her until her eyebrows fall off, do you understand? Please her if you can, but more importantly, make her pregnant if she’ll allow it.”

  He nodded, unable to speak.

  “But until you are married, you will come to stay in my Household. After you are married, Kallah will agree to allow you to continue to spend the majority of your free time here. She will allow this because as you have no House, I offer mine as your adoptive Family. This will no doubt take a little time to arrange, but I will become your... mother.” She laughed, eyes twinkling. “Eraelin is of course entirely correct; a Changriti heir cannot possibly be allowed to marry naekulam, the indignity is totally outrageous. But once you are Nga’ esha, Eraelin can have no objection since it will create a favorable bond between two powerful Houses. It will also provide you with a measure of personal security, as it would certainly be very bad manners indeed for anyone to make an attempt on the life of a member of my Family, no matter how minor.”

  She smiled at his obvious relief. “As you seem to be having communication problems with your current tutor, you will study with me, personally. In return, you will help me in the writing and correcting of my research on early Hengeli art. You will live and work in my House, and you will learn Vanar. You will accept your fate with grace, cease this childish sniveling about leaving and how wronged you’ve been, and learn to behave as a proper, respectable Vanar man. This is the best deal you will ever be offered, Nathan. Is this alternative acceptable to you?”

  He walked back with rubbery legs, and stood tentatively until she proffered her hands. He held them both gently. The breath was constricting in his throat. “Thank you,” he finally squeezed the words out.

  “You made me remember what it was to be young again,” she said softly, her eyes distant. “I was more outrageous then, reckless and impulsive. I’ve since repaid that misspent youth a hundred times over, dedicated my life and energies solely to Nga’esha interests, so staunch and steadfast and stodgy and totally boring.” She smiled mischievously, the skin around her eyes wrinkling. “I’d like to think that other part of me hasn’t died yet. I can see why Lyris Arjusana was so infatuated with you, foolish girl.”

  He winced, not willing to reminisce on either the young woman or the botched scheme that had trapped him here.

  She raised one eyebrow at him. “I am still gullible enough to want to believe your absurd offer was made because you like me, rather than merely as a tactical strategy.”

  “I do like you,” he said, then admitted, “but it was both.”

  “Of course.” She hesitated, then asked, reluctantly curious, “Could you really have been able to make love to me?”

  For an answer, he cupped her chin in his hand to tilt her face upward. Leaning over her, he brought his mouth down on hers, first a gentle press of his lips against hers. Then he parted her mouth with his tongue, and kissed her deeply, ignoring the smell of smoke on her breath, the faint taste of decay and death. He closed his eyes, feeling a sudden tenderness, something beyond passion or carnal desire, a sadness and affection for this dying old woman.

  The kiss went on with a growing intensity until, to his own astonishment, he felt a flutter stirring in his gut. Her hands caressed his arms, the brush of bird’s wings against his skin. His heart was beating fast before she was the one to finally push him away, two bright spots of color on her wrinkled cheeks.

  “You would kill me, Nathan,” she said, and laughed. He heard the girl’s lighthearted laugh and kissed her again, this time only a chaste touch of his lips to her forehead.

  When he stepped out into the sunshine, his body protected from the hot sun by layers of undyed linen, he walked quickly away from the men’s gate as it shut behind him and stood at the edge of the road leading away toward the center of the city below. He looked back up at the sprawling estate dominating the hillside, trying to determine which arched window she might be behind. No birdlike figure perched above to see him off, the high walls of the enclosed House as impervious as the formidable Dhikar guards watching him with deceptive tranquility.

  But he found himself smiling as he walked away, bare head up and enjoying the sunshine before he caught the disapproving scowl of two women passing him on the other side of the road.

  He ducked his chin down and covered his head with the edge of the dingy cloth as he walked. Keeping his eyes lowered, he pulled in his natural confident stride to one less assertive, more restrained.

  More appropriate for a proper, respectable Vanar man.

  PART ONE

  I

  IT HAD SEEMED LIKE SUCH A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME. ALL HE HAD wanted was enough sketches and notes and field samples for a narrow but formative article on indigenous Vanar botany, enough to make his name within the narrow confines of academics at least. He’d thought it simple enough, choosing a spot as far away from human habitation and any contam
ination of native flora from terraformed fields as possible to be undetected. Looking back now, it had been utterly preposterous that he could have Lyris drop him in a pod from the Comptess Dovian down to the planet, run loose through the jungle undetected, grab up a bunch of plants, and dash back to the Dovian before it took off for another cargo flight.

  He didn’t even last thirty seconds after landfall. In the midst of the densest alien rain forest he’d ever imagined, he’d opened the pod to find an entire contingent of women in their quaint native dress waiting to greet him. He’d been disappointed, but not frightened. Surely the worst that could happen would be immediate deportation on the next ship out, with or without a stiff fine. And these ladies looked harmless enough, until he’d smiled and advanced toward them, hoping to talk his way out of trouble....

  The next thing he remembered was waking up in a small cell. He had expected to be interrogated, but instead had been escorted through a series of different buildings and passed from hand to hand until he found himself undergoing a thorough medical examination. He had been stripped, prodded, poked, scraped, scanned, and bled, then abandoned to sit naked on an examining chair in a locked room.

  All of the medical personnel had been women, none of whom spoke Hengeli, which was nearly as disconcerting as the brusque treatment. He had never been on any world where, no matter what the native language was, Hengeli hadn’t been the most widely used vernacular. Insignificant as his home world might have become, her tongue was spoken on a hundred worlds throughout the star systems. All except, it seemed, on Vanar. The few memorized phrases Lyris had taught him achieved only blank looks and silence.

  After several hours, he dozed off, jolted awake when the door hissed open. A lone woman stood in the doorway, studying him curiously. Her face was light bronze, dark eyes over high, sharp cheekbones. Her black hair was pulled back from her face and hung in a thick ornate braid over her shoulder. Her full lips and small delicate nose didn’t soften her hard expression in the slightest.

  He covered his groin with his hands, both embarrassed and vulnerable, but she didn’t appear to notice his absurd gesture of modesty.

  “My name is Vasant Subah,” she said in accented if fluent Hengeli. She wore the simple blouse and loose-fitting pants he had seen Vanar women on Station wear, hers a luminous white with a deep burgundy border. Although she didn’t appear sympathetic, she didn’t seem hostile, either. “Who are you?”

  “Thank God,” he breathed. “My name is Nathan Crewe. I’m a Hengeli citizen. I request to see a lawyer, please.”

  The corners of her lips curled up sardonically. “A lawyer?” Alarm prickled the hair on his neck. “Or whatever the Vanar equivalent is. Under the human rights directives of the Convention, I am entitled to legal counsel.”

  Vasant Subah stared at him, and rubbed her forefinger across her chin as if to stifle a laugh. “What Convention? Vanar never signed any Convention; we were never part of your Territories. You are subject to Vanar laws now.”

  Now he was truly afraid. “Am I under arrest, then?”

  “You could call it that. As you’ve trespassed into Vanar illegally, you’re suspected of being a saboteur or a terrorist.”

  “Terrorist!” he blurted in shock. “I’m no terrorist, I’m a botanist. All I wanted was to take some samples of Vanar flora for scientific examination. Ask Lyris Arjusana, the subcaptain of the Comptess Dovian. She’ll tell you—”

  “We’ve already spoken with Subcaptain dva Arjusana.” Vasant Subah cut him off. “Her story seems a bit too far-fetched to believe.”

  He swallowed, his anger tempered with fear. “But it’s the truth. Don’t I even get a trial? You people must have some sort of a justice system, don’t you?”

  “Of course we do. You’ve already had your trial. You’ve been found guilty of illegal entry.” The woman’s stiff formal attitude had softened, although he wasn’t certain the contemptuous humor replacing it was much of an improvement.

  “Fine, no problem, I admit it. I’ll pay whatever the fine is. So deport me.”

  For some reason that made her smile even wider. “That almost convinces me,” she said. “Who would send a terrorist into Vanar as ignorant as you are?” Her eyes glittered with malicious amusement. “But whatever happens to you isn’t my concern. Others will have to decide what to do with you.”

  “So why are you here?”

  Her smile faded as she stepped toward him. “To find the truth.” He glanced down at her arms as she flexed strange muscles, ropy cords writhing under the skin. When she touched him, he understood.

  II

  HE QUICKLY FOUND HIS DEMAND TO SEE A HENGELI OFFICIAL REPRESENTATIVE was not only futile but his daring to even question the Vanar legal right to hold him prisoner punishable in ways he hadn’t dreamed of. His indignation at this injustice quickly turned to desperate offers to pay whatever fine or serve whatever time or hard labor they chose to sentence him to, all attempts at reasoning or pleading with his captors utterly ignored. He never stopped thinking of escape, but eventually he stopped talking about it, realizing his best defense was to remain silent and compliant.

  After several months of Vasant Subah’s agonizing interrogation whenever she felt he was too slow or unwilling to answer her relentless questions, he couldn’t imagine his torture could have gotten any worse.

  He was wrong.

  He couldn’t remember how he had gotten where he was, wherever that was, dimly aware of being cradled inside a spongy egg-shaped chamber, a soft white glow all around him. His entire body was enveloped in blood-warm membrane, and he gagged as he realized he couldn’t breathe, no air in his lungs. He flailed in horror before he realized he wasn’t actually suffocating. The membranous fluid enclosed his face, down his nose and throat into his lungs, keeping him alive. All he could smell was bitter cinnamon. He could move, but it was like swimming in jelly. It pressed lightly against his eyes, making even blinking slow. He ran his fingers over the surface of the smooth, soft barrier. It felt like living tissue, deceptively fragile, but no amount of desperate clawing at it had any effect. Although he wasn’t hungry, he couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten, his stomach oddly tight. He’d never been so terrified in his life.

  Drugs washed him in and out of unconsciousness, the sticky membrane delivering the chemicals through his skin and lungs. Every time he managed to fight his way back into waking, something knocked him down again. He fought the dreams, one nestled into the next, like an infinite set of hollow dolls, prying one open only to find another inside.

  He had no idea how long he slept. It might have been hours. It could have been weeks.

  It was certainly forever.

  Suddenly, he was no longer asleep. Three women, barely visible through the opaque membranous wall, watched him. Two of them he knew now to be Dhikar, the Vanar equivalent of police. The other he recognized. The Qsayati Vasant Subah, head of Vanar security.

  “Where am I, what is this?” he struggled to say, heart beating rapidly. His voice sounded strange, muffled in his own ears, and he wondered if she could hear him.

  Apparently, she could.

  “It’s called a whitewomb. These are designed for disturbed patients.”

  “Patients? I’m not ill.”

  She smiled wryly, her face distorted through the membrane. “There are no prisons on Vanar. We didn’t know where else to put you. It was decided this was the best solution, for your own protection as well as ours.”

  His anger flared even through the stupefying drugs. “If this is how you treat people, I’d settle for being treated like dirt, that might be an improvement.” He watched her idly stroking the implants in her arm, and fought down his panic. He pressed his hands against the pulpy wall to steady himself. “But you are going to kill me if you keep me in this thing for too much longer,” he said less heatedly. “Or is that what you intend to do to me?”

  She stared at him for a long moment. “Your alien physiology does seem incompatible with our whitew
omb system. Most patients find it... soothing.”

  He gasped as he felt his palms being pulled into the whitewomb’s membrane, and tried to pull away.

  “Stop resisting,” Vasant Subah advised him. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

  His hands were sucked through with a wet pop. The gelatinous fluid flowed around his face as the membrane expelled him, his arms waving eagerly like a blind man’s in front of him. He felt the odd vibration of her implants as Vasant Subah took his forearm. Without thinking, he tried to jerk away from her.

  “If you fight me,” she warned, “you’ll go back inside.”

  His fear of the whitewomb barely outweighed his fear of her, but he stopped struggling.

  “Don’t pull,” she said as his head was released, his eyes opening wide as the membrane peeled back with a wet smack. She held him steady as his remaining foot was slowly spat out, her fingers wrapped firmly around his biceps. He shivered in the cold air, his naked skin worm white against the brown of the woman’s hands. Trying to inhale, he panicked when his lungs didn’t respond. His knees buckled as he vomited, expelling a huge amount of membranous jelly from his lungs and throat. The women allowed him to remain on his hands and knees, coughing hoarsely until he could breathe again, before helping him to his feet.

  He glanced at the whitewomb behind him. It had sealed up without a seam, and now resembled a partly deflated oversized beachball someone had forgotten to add air into. A dozen more squatted in neat rows, a few as pale as mist, others with their shadowy contents moving sluggishly inside, hidden from view. He looked away, shuddering.

  The women took him to a place where he could shower the sticky white coating off his skin. Once he was clean, one of the impassive Dhikar silently handed him a paper jumpsuit. He pulled it on with trembling fingers. As he fastened the disposable suit, the second Dhikar produced a pair of gold bracelets decoratively incised and set with small gems. She clipped one around each of his wrists, their function made clear when she locked them together quite functionally as handcuffs.