The Vanished Birds

by Simon Jimenez

  I know too little to take action.

  Will wait; tomorrow we dock at B-N.

  BRAN-NERUDA STATION

  DAY 14

  Stylus heavy in hand as I write this entry. Still thinking about all I learned today. Taking all restraint available, to not start at the end.

  So, the beginning. We made our uneventful dock with Bran-Neruda Station. I think we were all happy to leave the ship for a while. A necessary release in pressure. The crew enjoyed themselves in the last Allied marketplace we will visit in some time, spending what iotas they could on things that might make the long journey easier; music compacts, imagers, pipes, physical games. The captain made sure everyone followed your rules—no neurals or delvers, nothing traceable with access to the Feed, though there were those who were less enthused with settling for the more analog entertainments. Sonja the mercenary was made to stay on the ship to keep watch on the boy. The captain said it was too dangerous for him to enter the station (Umbai-owned, with many Yellowjackets & plainclothes operatives scanning crowds with neurals for potential disturbers). Though I think the boy understood her reasoning, he made a sorry picture as he watched us leave the ship without him.

  It was good to stretch my legs after that eternity aboard the Debby. Though Bran-Neruda is not the most extravagant station, after being cooped up in that ship, I was still overwhelmed by the many glittering storefronts, the throngs of people coming to & from Allied Space. I soaked in the noise as I shopped, keeping in mind that beyond this station, I would be in unfamiliar territory for an indeterminate number of years. I discovered a treasure trove of classic literature in an Old Earth shop & have thus added a few dozen books to the captain’s collection in the common room—histories, adventures, & travel narratives whose authors have inspired my own writing, & will no doubt keep me in good company during our journey, much as they had in childhood.

  When we were all back on the ship, about to depart, the captain called us into the common room. We thought it was to be a standard debrief before our departure into the fringe. The requisite rousing speech. Em sat cross-legged on the floor, Royvan & Vaila on the sofa, Sonja on a chair pulled from the kitchen. I perched on a stool, by the counter that divided the space, recording all that I heard, to be synthesized into this report.

  The debrief was surprising, to say the least. The captain regarded us all, & said that shortly after we left Pelican Station, she discovered that the boy could speak. For the past two weeks, in her quarters, she has been learning who he is, & where he is from. He has had a difficult life, she told us. Speaking is a skill he is still learning. As is trust. To respect his privacy, she had originally left it to him to decide when he would trust us enough to talk. But the captain saw now that this process would have to be expedited before we entered the fringe, where it would be essential for all of our cards to be placed firmly on the table, faceup. She gazed about the room, lingering on Vaila, when she said that it was important that we trust each other, & that like the boy, she herself needed time to size us up. To understand just who she was working with. Her speech ended there. She stepped outside to fetch him. This moment brought to mind the opening act of a play; the curtain drawn, as the principal actor steps onto the stage, & we, the hushed audience, waited for him to speak the first words of this recital.

  Enter, the boy.

  * * *

  —

  Words were still new to him.

  Understanding words, he could do. It was the saying that froze his nerves, his tongue fighting to remember the shapes it was supposed to make. In that moment, his mind was a cloud of words, crashing into one another, broken and entangled.

  His hands clenched at his sides.

  Before she gathered the crew, Nia had taken him aside and told him that for the next hour, he was in charge. She smirked as she said this, as if to let him know this was all just play. Nothing to be scared of. She told him he didn’t need to answer any questions he didn’t wish to answer. He could stop the proceedings at any time if he got too uncomfortable. He could even leave the room mid-thought, and that would be that.

  “For the next hour,” she said, “you are the captain.”

  He looked at them all; to the new ones whose names he was still learning, and to those he trusted. Sonja. Nia.

  He unballed his fists.

  And he told them where he was from.

  Our silence in the common room was a solid thing as we sat there, listening to the soft rasp of his unused, adolescent voice. He relayed his story in curt, halting statements, & with the aid of intense gesture & facial expression.

  A Quiet Ship.

  That was where he said he came from.

  He covered his mouth with his hand, and he shook his head.

  “None,” he said, through his fingers.

  Speaking was not allowed there.

  He mimed the act of playing musical instruments, playing a bow against an invisible violin. He gestured to people taller than himself. His masters.

  “They speak. I follow,” he said. “They tell. I do. They play music. I—” He stopped. Struggled for the word. He looked to Nia for help, as he tapped his ear, clueing her into the word he searched for. She understood.

  “Listen,” she said.

  “I listen,” he said.

  He served at the pleasure of these masked musicians as they played ancient symphonies in a grand hall of red curtain. It was a ship of castes, of which he was the lowest. His days spent attending his masters with their bowls of rosin & polish sponges, restringing of violins & cellos & mandolins & the sanding of new instruments.

  “Bowl,” he said, holding an invisible tureen. “Once, I drop.” He opened up his hands, and let the tureen clatter to the floor. Rosin, everywhere. “Make a…mess. Oh well.”

  The crew laughed at this choice of words.

  “For this, they hurt me.” They fell silent as he touched his arm and traced the ulna with his forefinger. “Bone,” he said. He always liked that word. The strength of it.

  He held out two fists, side by side, as if the ulna were in his grip.

  He snapped it.

  For every mistake, a beating. A breaklet wand thrown against the rib, cracking the bone & re-fusing it in moments, leaving behind only the memory of the fracture, the body still able to perform its due tasks. A beating, for not breathing properly. It was a world that valued self-control in all aspects.

  Even now he could hear it: the peculiar click when the wand extended from its sheath. The red light on its tip, like an eye, and the buzzing sound, like a chitinous bug.

  When Nia asked him if he was okay, he flinched.

  “Yes,” he said.

  A Quiet Ship, swollen with music & suffering.

  There were many more details, each more gruesome than the last. Tongues that were clipped from the mouths of crying babies—his voice disturbingly matter-of-fact, & even touched with a hint of pride as he showed us his own tongue, pink & fully intact, & told us that he was one of the good ones.

  There was a slight smile on his lips as he remembered pride. The ecstasy, when he perfectly polished the cello, and the Mistress gave him her rare nod of approval; a nod barely noticeable, unless one were looking for it, which he was. And which he found. This was a good memory.

  We live in an era where ships can slip into the opaque folds of the universe, & sail along the fringe ripples of time. We can generate muscle tissue, & spool the threads into new limbs. Sunder continents with a single YonSef explosive device. Life has changed, but not our capacity for absurd cruelties. For all my complaints of how my parents kept a house, I recognize that I have had a privileged childhood. Albeit poor in laughter, ours was a family never in want of food or security. I have no love for that old home in the Aerie of the station, but I cannot dispute that it was, by definition, a home. One that was mine.
All the boy had was hell.

  There were many reactions. The man with the big beard whom they called Doctor mumbled his disgust with the Musicians. The man who was dagger-thin, and whom they called Engineer, looked at Ahro with an appraising look and a slow nod, as if they had more in common than either had realized. And the woman with soft, round features and the careful hair, the one they called Pilot, stared into the corner of the room, avoiding his gaze completely.

  As for the other one, the older man at the counter who had no title or honorific, he was at work, writing notes on vellum, with lips pursed in focus.

  The galaxy is strange, & its terrors varied. Hundreds of generation ships still remain unaccounted for. I’m sure you have seen the stories on the Feed; unique cultures that gestate in these behemoths during the long passages through the Pocket. I for one am willing to believe that one of these ships is the baroque hell that the boy has described.

  There are holes in his tale. He does not know how he escaped from the Quiet Ship, & was without explanation for why dhuba farmers discovered him naked & unconscious in their crop fields, among the black ruin of what I now suspect were the remains of an escape pod.

  What he did have an explanation for was how he learned to speak in a ship where speaking was not allowed. He struggled for a time, organizing the chaos of unused words in his head, before he settled on “Kind One.”

  It was this Kind One who showed him the nature of words, in secret, their clandestine meetings taking place in random rooms throughout the ship while the other musicians slept. The Kind One taught him the words for Please, Help, in preparation for the day that he might quit that place. & they taught him the way of names.

  “No name,” he said, tapping his chest. “We have no name. Kind One teaches. Shows me.” He gestured before him, to an imagined window. He reached in, and grabbed something. “I find name. Give to me.”

  The room was quiet.

  “What is your name?” Sartoris asked him.

  His arms lowered.

  “Ahro,” he said.

  He pronounced it Ah-Row. The spelling is my own invention, as he does not yet know his letters. Ahro is not a word that I have heard before, & by the blank expressions of the others, unfamiliar to them as well. Even to the boy himself, who could not say why he chose this name, only that he had, the word plucked from the Kind One’s tutor screen.

  It is tempting to imagine this moment in full: him, sitting before this screen, flicking through topics during their covert nights, filling his mind with details of the outside worlds—until he stops. Discovers in this grand encyclopedia some forgotten language, & sees there, before him, this word.

  Ahro.

  Perhaps he has the Kind One speak it for him first, before he tries it out on his own; smiling over the syllables, the sound like a sweet on his tongue, rhyming with the word of his soul; a discovery of not only his new name, but a guiding philosophy on life. That this is how everyone should be named: a hand, thrown into a bag of words, in search of that singular & fitting shape.

  Royvan was the first to stand from his seat & extend his hand to the boy in partnership. Engineer Em followed his lead, & I after him, the three of us telling the boy it was a pleasure to finally meet him. Only Vaila did not rise. She looked to the boy, & then the captain, in confusion & lace of frustration, before she asked if he truly had nothing to tell us about his supposed ability. When the captain confirmed that he did not, Vaila got up & left the room, leaving behind an almost inaudible “Nice to meet you” to the boy on her way elsewhere.

  Once the debrief was over, the crew set to work preparing for departure, quietly, all of us in an interior sort of mood as we thought about what the boy told us, & what he did not. Though I believe Vaila’s concerns could’ve been spoken with better timing, & tact, I cannot deny that those concerns are valid. How inextricably our lives are bound to this child’s, on an uncertain route to nowhere.

  A strange, sobering day.

  * * *

  —

  But I should not forget to make note of the music.

  After I finished shopping in Bran-Neruda, I was making my way to the docks when I caught sight of the captain through the window of a repair & requisitions shop. Like any good busybody, I made my way in & inquired about her business—made it look as though I had my own matters to attend to there; a fiction she saw right through, & one I had no evidence with which to back up. But she did not seem too concerned about my presence, & told me she was there for a gift. She showed me what it was that she had come to get repaired. Told me who it was for.

  A flute. She had purchased it years ago, back in the days when she made her rounds between Macaw & Barbet. When she first met Ahro—only “the boy” then—she gave him this flute to play with. She told me he was quite taken with the gift, until an incident rendered it unplayable; snapped in half “on accident,” though what accident this was, the captain would not be more specific.

  We both gazed down upon the repaired object. The fissure was fused with an inlay swirl of gold & silver, & at the base, she had his name inscribed in small, neat lettering. It was beautiful work. I told the captain he would love it.

  But after hearing his story, I wondered if a flute would make an appropriate gift for a boy whose history with music is also that of pain on a dark & Quiet Ship. That the flute might trigger some horrible flashback, rather than bring him joy. But it was not my business, the gifts she gave, or the thoughts in his head. I know more today than I did before, but there is still much about him that is a mystery. One day, I will ask what it is he hears, when he hears the notes of music: the infernal, or the celestial.

  Judging by what I hear now—that flute song through my open door—it is most likely something in between.

  A fiery heaven all its own.

  We have ten minutes till we fold again, from where we shall rocket along the Gracious Current to the fringe world of Drannon. When I asked the captain for strategies to curb the fold-nausea, she said it helps to have something to focus on; an object, like a worry stone, to distract from the nausea. Last time we folded I tried gripping one of the safety rails embedded in the wall, but still vomited all of my lunch, much to Sonja’s amusement. But I am nothing if not resolute—this go-round I will use something of more sentimental value: the comb in my pocket, which once belonged to my father. I will rub my thumb along its worn tines & remember how cross he would be should I embarrass the family name with my unpleasant retching. & should the comb fail me, I will be positioned near the causeway lav, ready to make use of the toilet. But faith, Sartoris! Believe in your own strength!

  THE GRACIOUS CURRENT

  DAY 16

  The second fold was somehow worse than the last. A true punch to the stomach. For two hours was doubled over the toilet in painful evacuation. Gross exaggeration of the body no doubt heard throughout the ship. My status has shifted from dedicated transcriber to village joke. Not a moment goes by when Engineer Em is not teasing me for my “weak” constitution.

  That aside, there is a noticeable change in atmosphere on the Debby. The air is not quite the brittle glass it once was, the awkwardness between us less palpable. There are now even jokes.

  Some funnier than others.

  For instance. Today, I had gone to the medica to see about the numbness in my foot, only to discover that the mercenary Sonja had beaten me there. She was propped on the metal table wearing nothing but her undergarments while she answered the good doctor’s questions monosyllabically. When they noticed me, I asked if I should return later, but the doctor said they were almost done, & the merc seemed completely comfortable wearing so little clothing around strangers. Experience from her soldiering days, I gather. I sat to the side & observed their appointment. Learned that the merc’s left leg is vat-grown, the real one blown off by a party mine during a poorly strategized skirmish—though I a
m well aware that you probably knew this already. There is a darker hue to the vat leg than the rest of her body. Apparently the muscle threads were woven in a time before the science of it had been perfected. Every two months she requires a reacclimation injection, right on the line where the new tissue starts, lest the limb revolt, & break off her hip like an old branch from a tree. Sonja said all this matter-of-factly, through sweat & gritted teeth, as she endured the slow push of the doctor’s needle, & the neon-blue fluid that flooded her veins.

  When she was done, the doctor asked what ailed me. After hearing the merc’s story, I felt more than silly coming in with my tingly foot, & thought I heard Sonja snort when I explained my symptoms to him. Royvan had me sit on the metal table. The merc dressed herself at the side of the room while the doctor gently squeezed his way down my ankle & sole. He then stepped back with a sudden & severe expression, & told me the foot would have to be amputated. The blood drained from my face. I sputtered some nonsense that not even I could decipher, much less repeat here. Royvan & Sonja shared a glance. & then he laughed, & confessed that he was only joking. The merc chuckled. I felt the fool. He unscrewed a bottle & tapped out two small gray pills onto my palm, assuring me this would cure my affliction by the start of the next day. Noticed the doctor look after the merc as she exited the room, sensed a glimmer of attraction, but was too peeved to take further note. I slinked back to my quarters, humiliated.

  To the doctor’s credit, he came to see me later in the day to apologize. I of course accepted. Eventually. Not before jousting with a prank of my own, when I told him I would write to one M. Nakajima & recommend his execution.

  So, things are progressing. Jollies abound. It helps that we have not only a name but also a context for the boy—Ahro, need to get accustomed to no longer calling him “the boy”!—& there is no longer that requisite awkwardness when he steps into a room. & although there is a beguiling quality to his stilted approach to language, it is a vast improvement to his impenetrable silences.