A Walk Between Stars

by Tyler Parsons

  “We are fine with your observations of us,” he continued.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yes, Tech Four. You are welcome to look in any window you wish. My people will not raise issue with your…” he paused, “peeping.”

  “Um,” I stammered, not knowing what to say. “Okay. I guess that works. More freedom for me then.” I smiled, then remembered he had called me here. “So what did you need me for?”

  Steward tilted his head slightly. “Did you not desire to converse today?”

  I puffed out a short laugh. “Absolutely I do. Is that all you called me over for though?

  “Yes,” he said. “It has come to the attention of our ship’s physician that the Terran species does not function well under solitary circumstances.”

  “Oh, really?“ I said.

  “So I was asked to spend time conversing with you between my other duties,” Steward said.

  “Wow, that’s good of you. It’ll go a long way in keeping me sane.”

  “The captain does not want to be accused of negligence when we return you to your people.”

  “Well…” I started. “That’s mighty political of him.”

  A moment passed in silence. I had a thousand questions, but felt hesitant to start drilling Steward with them right away.

  Steward tilted his head again. “So what should we discuss?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, still leery to start on my questions. “Do you have any topics in mind?”

  “Shakespeare,” he said, without even a pause.

  I laughed out loud.

  I confessed to knowing next to nothing about Shakespeare. But conceded to the topic.

  It turned out that I knew a hell of a lot more than I realized. I had read a couple of his plays, and seen a couple performed. Surprisingly I retained more knowledge and opinions of them than I would have thought possible. But more than that, I realized as we spoke that Shakespeare permeated my culture so much, that it was hard not to know the references, and have opinions. As a result, we had a much broader conversation of the topic than I anticipated I was capable.

  Who would have thought?

  Granted a significant amount of the conversation demanded layered explanations about human background and culture. But the time flew by. Before I knew it, we had been talking for almost three hours and Steward had to cut the conversation short to go to bed—or, “obtain an optimum sleep cycle,” as he put it. He said he would contact me when his shift cycle was complete the following day, and established that this was to be our regular meeting place for social conversation.

  CHAPTER SIX

  After Steward left, I felt awkward watching the rec-room aliens while tethered so close to the window. I knew Steward said they didn’t care if I watched them, but I just couldn’t shake the awkwardness I felt. I decided to try to keep to the shadows regardless. The fact they didn’t care, made me feel less like a scumbag for spying on their secrets. But I thought I’d still rather stick to the shadows and give myself the illusion that I’m not being so blunt about it.

  I untethered myself from the ship and pushed off along the hull. There was a window with a light about ten meters away that I didn’t think I’d been close enough to see in yet. It was a smaller window, which is why I had skirted it prior to now. But, new freedoms and all—I decided to take a peek.

  The room was small with only a single Manti inside; a female. I could tell right away it had to be her private quarters. There was a table with one of the sphere-like computer workstations. In another corner there was a large beanbag. I didn’t see anything resembling a bed, but it occurred to me that they might sleep on the beanbags as well as relax on them. The only thing I couldn’t identify right away was a bucket hanging from the ceiling—at least that was the closest thing I could compare it too off the top of my head.

  The Manti was hovering around the workstation with what I identified as a small vacuum device. She ran it over the table, the sphere, the keyboard type arm devices, and up and down the legs of the table. Then did it all again. She took a few steps back, tilted her head and stared at the workstation for maybe ten seconds. Then attacked the table a third time with the vacuum.

  I think it’s clean, lady.

  Luckily after the workstation’s fourth detailing, she placed the vacuum in a cubby off to the side of the table.

  I’m glad that was over.

  She started to walk towards the beanbag, then stopped still.

  Is it clean enough? I imagined the conflict in her mind. Did I get it all? Yeah, I’m sure I…

  She turned her torso around just enough to be able to look back at the workstation.

  What if I missed something?

  I thought back momentarily on the nature documentaries I saw as a child, where the guy doing the voice over would pretend to be in the baby otter’s head. Except, instead of a baby otter, we had an alien Manti; and instead of playing in the snow, we were cleaning with maddening obsessive compulsiveness.

  Don’t do it, lady.

  Then from her stand still she whipped around suddenly.

  Ah shoot.

  When I finally left the clean freak’s window, she had literally cleaned every square inch of her quarters several times over.

  An hour into watching her, I figured out what the hanging bucket was; it was a sink. The rope it hung by must have been flexible piping that carried the methane down to fill it.

  I took a few laps around the ship; determined to keep up my regimen. As I pulled myself along, I passed several illuminated windows, but I maintained focus and told myself I could watch as a reward for completing my laps.

  When I finished, I found a new window and settled down to see what we had going on inside.

  It was a large room. If I hadn’t seen the private quarters of little miss clean freak earlier, I may have mistaken this for a public room, it was so large. But despite its size, it had all the same features of the smaller private quarters. There were more tables, shelves, beanbags, a more complex looking workstation, several decorative items, and two (count ‘em) hanging bucket sinks. Were these the private quarters of some posh ambassador or something?

  The problem with a species that wore no clothing, was the inability to distinguish rank or class easily. The Manti that stood there could have been anyone, and only the fancy digs gave him away as someone special.

  He stood at the table—a dagger laid in front of him on a towel. The dagger was quite fancy, resembling an artistic showpiece. It looked nothing like an actual usable instrument. It was probably over thirty centimeters long, but most of that length was in the handle. The blade itself was only about a third of the overall length, which felt like an odd ratio to me. There were carvings on the side of the blade as well as along the guard and around the pommel. The carvings looked like script, but didn’t resemble the Manti characters I had seen in other areas of the ship. The hilt was wrapped in black leather. What ever it was, it wasn’t a kitchen utensil.

  Only the best would do for the Ambassador I suppose. Do you think he cuts his steak with this?

  The dagger was obviously valuable to him. He held it in a reverent manner. Using a small towel, he dipped in a bowl of white paste, he lightly rubbed the surface of the dagger.

  He polished it for a very long time, before meticulously wiping it clean and applying a protective oil to it.

  The scene reminded me fondly of my father who I had seen on many occasions as a child cleaning his old pistol. It was a Kimber 1911 and it had been passed down from my great-great-grandfather or something. It belonged to me now, and was buried somewhere deep in a storage unit back on Earth. I hadn’t even thought of that gun in over ten years.

  I left the Ambassador an hour or so later, still rubbing oil into his fancy knife.

  The next morning while running through my morning laps, I passed the room I had found Bubbles in—that’s what I was calling her. There were several Manti in there today. The beanbags had been rearranged. There were ma
ybe a dozen aliens altogether, in a large circle holding hands, their forearms clasped one with another. They didn’t seem to be doing anything; just sitting there, completely still.

  Then the motion of one of them speaking caught my eye. But by the time I focused on her, she was motionless. As I looked at them closely, she spoke again. Something short and abrupt. No one responded to her, that I could see. A minute passed, and again her mandibles moved briefly.

  What was this? Was she leading them in prayer?

  I zoomed in until the image of the speaking Manti filled my visor. She spoke again. But this time I caught additional movement at her forearms. Her sharp cretaceous-like phalanges tapped something out against the forearm of the Manti sitting next to her. I zoomed out a little, and waited. She spoke again, and again I saw the tapping, but now I saw her do it with both arms simultaneously.

  Zooming out yet again, so I could see the whole circle, I waited. This time when she spoke, there was a small, almost indiscernible, motion that started with her tapping, and manifested itself as a wave (or ripple if you will) as the tapping transferred from one Manti to the next ending at the Manti on the opposite side of the circle.

  This continued in a loop. The speaker would speak briefly, then tap. Each in turn would pass the tap along to the end, then a pause, and the whole cycle would repeat.

  Yup, obviously this was some sort of campfire game.

  She spoke again, then the tapping.

  “I’m going on a camping trip,” I said out loud, “and I’m bringing a drum solo by Keith Moon from The Who. Ba-da-boom-boom-ba.”

  It brought a smile to my face.

  I remembered I hadn’t finished my morning laps, so I unhooked and pulled myself along to the finish line.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Just as I finished my last lap, Steward called me to the rec-room.

  What great timing.

  When I got to the window, he was busy setting out several carved stones on the table.

  “Hey Steward, “ I greeted him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “What have we got here?” I asked.

  “This,” he said as he swept an arm over the display, “is a game we learn as children. It is the closest thing we have to your Terran game of chess.”

  There were three long flat strips (maybe made of some sort of wood) that laid perpendicular to each other, a few centimeters apart. Steward was carefully placing the small carved stones onto these strips. The width of the strip was just enough to place a single row of stones along its length.

  “It is a game of strategy and war,” he continued.

  “What’s it called?” I asked.

  He made a sound full of clicks and a hum that didn’t translate. I shook my head to indicate that it didn’t come through.

  He nodded softly, then said, “You may call it Three Bridges.”

  He reached down and with his foremost digit on each arm, touched two of the strips of wood, and said, “These are the bridges. They are the platforms the pieces are placed on. And these—“ he splayed open his digits, and opened his arms in a revealing manner above the game, “—are soldiers.”

  The game was extremely complex; much more so than chess. Imagine taking the whole game of chess and compressing it down to be played along a single line, rather than a grid. Now imagine playing three games simultaneously (the three bridges).

  The goal of the game was to control both sides of a bridge. Once a player controlled two bridges this way, he could claim victory.

  The first time through, the game took over two hours. Steward won of course— but he assured me that once I had the basics down, we could play several games in that same time. He also kept stressing to me that we were playing the game in its most basic form, and that this was the level in which Manti children played.

  Way to bring out my confidence. Thanks buddy.

  When the game was complete, Steward started packing the game pieces away and said, “I still have some time I could spend with you. What would you like to discuss today?”

  Rather than give him the chance to steer me into a conversation about Beethoven or worse, I decided to ask about the campfire prayer circle I saw earlier.

  “Steward, “ I started, “I saw something a bit odd today, and I can’t quite figure out what I was watching.”

  He tilted his head in interest.

  “Could you shed some light on it for me?” I said. “Just out of curiosity really.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Please, tell me of what you saw.”

  I told him.

  Steward said, “that was a…” no translation. Then he paused for a moment. “A story telling.”

  “Story?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Ok. I could see that now.

  “What was all the tapping about?”

  No translation. He tilted his head and paused. “Touch language.”

  “That was language?” I asked. “They communicate with tapping?”

  “Yes,” Steward said. “It is very old. Much older than any of our current spoken dialects. It has the ability to convey a much broader sense of emotion than our spoken words.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yes,” he continued, “The stories cannot be told in the depth required without the use of the touch talk.”

  Steward explained to me that as I watched the story circle, what I was seeing was the speaker saying a few words via the global dialect, then expounding upon those words with the tapping; adding the imagery, the emotion, and all the elements required for it to be a story.

  He tried to show me the tappings for a few basic phrases. But I could easily tell I would never be able to read it—especially at full speed; like what I saw during the story circle. I nodded along though, as Steward showed me the various phrases. It was easier to feign understanding when the alternative would have lead to an extremely detailed, and boring, break down on each phrase.

  I didn’t have to feign very long, however. Steward’s time was up shortly, and he left me at the window.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next several weeks passed easily along.

  I incorporated isometric exercise into my daily routine. It wasn’t easy, but I knew that my daily laps weren’t cutting it—I could feel my strength deteriorating.

  Slowly, all of the games I played to pass the time dropped off my daily routine. If I wasn’t exercising, or chatting with Steward, I was watching the Manti. I occasionally pulled out the dice, but just as something to do with my hands while I watched.

  Most of the Manti went along with completely ordinary lives—ordinary for aliens. Once I recognized the patterns of their daily minutia, they quickly became nothing special to me. The outliers were the ones I gravitated towards.

  The Clean Freak of course; I couldn’t go more than a day or two without having to swing in and see how she was getting along. She was fun to watch because it didn’t matter that she wasn’t human. The thoughts running through her head were as transparent as if she had subtitled thought bubbles.

  Crazy OCD behavior was universal I guess.

  The Ambassador was another favorite. He was always entertaining various individuals, or throwing parties.

  About a week to ten days after my first encounter with the Ambassador, I stumbled upon him polishing his fancy dagger again. I had almost forgotten about it. As it turned out, it wasn’t the last time I would see the dagger. I caught a glimpse of him polishing it or just admiring it every other visit it seemed. I liked it when he pulled it out. It made me think of my father and that old 1911. I swore when I made it back, I’d pull it out of storage and clean it up.

  The secretaries were still doing secretarially stuff I suppose. I’d watch them on occasion despite nothing really ever happening there. For all I knew they could be planning to colonize Jupiter or some nonsense. But they still looked like secretaries to me.

  I did have an incident last week that I wished to never repeat.

  I watched a
couple lounge about in private quarters. They had two beanbags pulled close, and as they relaxed they held arms, doing that tapping thing. After a while they stood and gripped each other in what appeared to be a dancing stance. There was some wiggling—not a dance I was familiar with.

  A fleeting thought entered my mind. What if this was how they did it?

  Once that thought flittered through, it took hold on me. And I could no longer look at these two and think that they were dancing. What I first thought was just a funny joke, quickly became the reality of the situation. They were copulating, I was sure of it. My first instinct was to reject the thought—after all, who was I to be watching this? But I could not deny it.

  I froze. No longer wanting anything to do with this, but unable to move away in fear of being spotted. Steward said they didn’t care, but I just couldn’t believe they would be ok with THIS.

  Awkward.

  My favorite of all was Bubbles. I knew I could ask Steward at any time what she was doing. But that would strip away the magic of it. She was blowing bubbles into a bucket of water, what wasn’t intriguing about that?

  She was hard to catch. Most of the time, the room would be occupied by a story circle group if it was occupied at all.

  Yesterday, however, Bubbles was there. But for the first time, she wasn’t alone. The room was filled with Manti relaxing on the beanbags in the semi-circle, all focused on Bubbles doing her thing.

  I noticed a cord leading from the liquid filled container over to what I think was a large speaker. Then I realized; she was playing a musical instrument. It made sense now, she had been practicing, and now had an audience.

  I had no idea what the music must have sounded like, but I imagined. Most of the Manti listened in stillness, but a few swayed slightly. They didn’t just sway back and forth, but rather swayed to a beat I think. It helped my mind’s ear compose the beauty that Bubbles was playing.

  Steward asked me later if I wanted to hear a sample of the music, but I chose not to. It was beautiful to me—why take a chance at destroying the dream?