Bright Shards

by Meg Pechenick

  Zey appeared at my elbow. “Hey.”

  “Hey! I was starting to think you weren’t here.”

  “I wasn’t. They only released me from the hearings twenty minutes ago. I haven’t even seen my quarters yet.”

  “You’ve been in hearings all day?” I looked him over. He did look a little tired, but not enough that I would have noticed it on my own. His hair was always tousled, and Zey could make even a fresh uniform look rumpled.

  “We all have. Hathan and Ziral are still there.”

  I frowned. “I don’t understand. You were barely involved in what happened. Except for the part where you knocked Vekesh down and saved the day. What could they possibly have to say to you that would take that long?”

  “Oh, they’re not done with me yet. They barely scratched the surface. The Echelon wants to know everything about the mission, from the very beginning. They spent an hour just grilling me about the language policy.” He sighed. “It’s going to be a long week.”

  At that point we were joined by Councilor Zirian, who invited us to take our seats for dinner. I was discouraged to see that Zey and Sohra had both been placed out of comfortable speaking range. I found myself at what was clearly the highest-ranking table, with Zirian himself, Kylie, Governor Tavri, and a couple of Fleet officers and civilians who looked vaguely familiar from the cocktail hour. One of the Fleet officers, bearing a khavi’s insignia on his sleeve, I tentatively placed as the commander of the Black Moon. There were two empty seats at the table, and as people were finding their places, Saresh arrived to claim one of them. He smiled at me. The marks of fatigue were plainer on his face than they had been on Zey’s. I felt an unbidden flare of resentment toward the Echelon. Saresh’s injury had been more serious than mine; he was still walking with the aid of a cane. Surely providing medical attention to a wounded man ought to take priority over subjecting him to hours of debriefing.

  When everyone had been seated, Governor Tavri rose to offer some boilerplate remarks on the historic moment in which we found ourselves, the promise of interspecies cooperation embodied by Kylie and me, and the honor our presence represented for Arkhati Starhaven. “We’re particularly glad to have Avery safely among us,” she said. Avery, I thought; the affectation of familiarity was a convenient way to sidestep the choice between an English and a Vardeshi title. Tavri continued, “Her path here hasn’t been an easy one, and I know I speak for all the citizens of Arkhati when I pledge to show her a different face of the Vardeshi people than she has seen thus far.” It was a little unfair, I thought, to dismiss the entire crew of the Pinion so cavalierly, as if Vekesh had tarnished them all with his betrayal. Keeping my expression carefully neutral, I glanced across the table at Saresh, who raised an eyebrow very slightly in response to my look.

  When Tavri finished speaking, there was a moment of respectful silence, the Vardeshi version of applause, and then conversations resumed at the various tables. I turned to ask Kylie a question about the Black Moon and saw Hathan making his way through the tables in our direction. I wondered how much of Tavri’s speech he had overheard. He slipped into the empty seat on the far side of the table, which happened to be beside Saresh, and they exchanged a few words too soft for me—or presumably anyone else—to overhear. Governor Tavri made the obligatory introductions. Her manner was cool and formal, reinforcing my impression that the warm greeting she had offered Kylie and me had been exaggerated for diplomatic reasons.

  I hadn’t been privy to the dinner arrangements, but Kylie clearly had, as our first course arrived in tandem with that of our hosts. “Who cooked this?” I asked as a bowl of steaming onion soup was placed in front of me.

  “One of the chefs on the starhaven,” Kylie said.

  “Is that safe?”

  Councilor Zirian said, “The research teams on Earth have made a great deal of progress over the past few months. You may not be fully up to date on their findings. It appears that it’s safe for us to handle each other’s food, with a few exceptions.”

  “Lemons and macadamia nuts,” Kylie specified. “And coriander.”

  “Fortunately, the risk seems to be limited to contact and ingestion, not airborne exposure,” the Councilor went on.

  “Does that mean I can go to hydroponics?” I said hopefully.

  “Not only that, but you can sample a few of the crops,” said Governor Tavri. “A number of Vardeshi foods have been approved for human consumption. You’ll have to have an allergen test first, of course.”

  “Senek’s been cleared,” said Kylie. “And that gray beer. Not the whiskey, though—something in the distillation process doesn’t agree with us.”

  “Senek?” I exclaimed. “Really?”

  Kylie laughed. “Been letting your inbox pile up? Senek was the first thing to clear. That was almost a month ago now.”

  “Our communications network had already been disabled at that point,” Saresh said quietly. “And the last two weeks have been . . . eventful.”

  “God, that’s right. Sorry, I should have thought.” Kylie’s chagrin was obvious.

  To smooth things over, I asked brightly, “So what else have I missed?”

  Kylie took a sip of wine while she considered. “Let’s see. There are the dull ones—lots of soaps and detergents. We can wash each other’s dishes and scrub floors and all that. You’ll be glad of that one. No more gloves when you’re doing your novi chores.”

  “Oh, good,” I said, a little guiltily. I hadn’t worn gloves after the first week. It had just seemed like too much trouble. From the trace of a smile on Saresh’s face, I could tell that he knew what I was thinking.

  “And we can all shower with our own toiletries again,” Kylie went on.

  I nodded. “I thought I smelled real shampoo.”

  “You did. But you should try the Vardeshi soaps. They have some incredible fragrances. We can’t wear perfume though. Supposedly they’re a nasal irritant, but I think the Vardeshi just don’t like them.”

  “Can you blame them?” I said.

  As the first course was cleared away, Kylie listed a few more scientific breakthroughs. The most exciting one was that each of our species appeared naturally immune to the other’s most commonplace ailments. “At this point we’ve more or less abolished quarantine procedures. There doesn’t seem to be any point to them. The Strangers are all in terrific health after three months of exposure to Vardeshi pathogens, and it looks like the worst thing the Vardeshi on Earth have to worry about is a bad sunburn. They’re not catching the common cold, and we’re not catching the . . . what is it? The summer flux? Whatever it’s called.”

  The others at the table had been listening in evident amusement to our conversation, but they hadn’t interjected. When Kylie reached the end of her list, however, Hathan said, “That was a comprehensive summary, Ms. Braswell, but you’ve forgotten one thing. The last item on the approved list.”

  Kylie glanced at him. “What’s that?”

  “Interspecies sexual contact.”

  I had just taken a sip of wine. I choked so violently that the Vardeshi nearest me recoiled in alarm, reaching for their flexscreens. Kylie, convulsed with laughter at my reaction, hastened to assure them that I didn’t need medical attention. When I could speak again, I gasped, “What? How? I mean, not how. Who?”

  Kylie pushed her glass of water toward me. “Officially, no names have been released. And they won’t be. But I think it was one of the Vardeshi delegates with someone on Earth. Not one of the Strangers.”

  “Why not?” Saresh asked.

  She grinned at him. “Because if it was one of us, I’d know about it.”

  A thousand questions sprang instantly to mind: What were the genders of the participants? Had the encounter been satisfying for either party? Had it been a one-time experiment, purely in the interests of science, or was there now a human-Vardeshi couple in existence? It might have been permissible to ask—certainly the others around the table had greeted Hathan’s introduction of th
e subject with almost clinical calm—but I wasn’t at all confident that I could match their composure. I’d never been good at disguising my feelings, and this topic was closer to my heart than any of them (except Saresh) had reason to suspect. Deciding to save my questions for a more private venue, I ventured a harmless query about the Vardeshi foods that had been approved for ingestion by humans.

  Thus steered back into safer channels, the conversation continued through the remainder of the meal, guided in about equal proportions by Kylie, Governor Tavri, and Councilor Zirian. In deference to Kylie’s still-developing language skills, everyone spoke English. I understood the reason for the choice, but it still made me vaguely uncomfortable. It seemed too easy, almost like cheating, a feeling I suspected was a holdover of Vekesh’s Vardeshi-only decree. There was a brief exchange between the councilor and Saresh that drew my interest, suggesting as it did an old acquaintance between the former and Senator Takheri, but I wasn’t able to overhear much of it. I was fully aware that the others at the table were making light, disarming conversation in order to keep me from having to talk about the last few weeks on the Pinion. I let them do it. Hathan said almost nothing. It would be difficult, I thought dryly, to equal the impact of his first contribution.

  When the savory plates and postprandial drinks were passed around, I watched longingly as Kylie poured herself a cup of senek. “It’s safe,” she said. “I’ve already had my scratch test.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  “It’s no fun if I tell you.” She raised her cup to me in a mocking toast.

  A bottle of Earth whiskey had been thoughtfully provided for Kylie and me, and she had a glass of it to accompany her senek. I opted for coffee instead. It arrived at the table strong and hot, obviously freshly prepared. I cradled the cup in my hands as I looked down the table. As the end of the evening approached, the mood had relaxed perceptibly, and most people had fallen into low-voiced discourse with their seatmates. Councilor Zirian had poured whiskey for both Takheri brothers with a generous hand when the decanter was first passed around. Now I watched Saresh top off his own glass and lean over to refill Hathan’s without asking. They were both too controlled to betray the strain I knew they must be feeling, but I had never seen them sitting together in silence for so long without work of some kind to hand. That fact alone was revealing to anyone who knew them. I looked over at Governor Tavri and saw that she was gazing in their direction too. I wondered how well she knew them.

  All at once I noticed that the lanterns strung high overhead were growing fainter, their radiance softening to the dim glitter of candlelight. A young woman in flowing crimson garments reminiscent of the uniform worn for ranshai, the principal Vardeshi martial art, stepped forward to claim the attention of the seated guests. “Good evening,” she said. “If you would join us in the anteroom, the performance is about to begin.”

  “Performance?” I whispered to Kylie as everyone began getting to their feet.

  She bent down to retrieve her bag from under the table. “This must be the cultural exchange portion of the evening. I think they’re doing some kind of ritual dance for us.”

  We walked together through the doorway and into the smaller room, where people had begun to gather along the outer walls, leaving the central space empty for the performance. Those in front of Kylie and myself stepped politely aside to allow us a clearer view. The young woman who had previously spoken was waiting in the middle of the floor. When the flow of traffic out of the dining room had ceased, she said, “We give you the traditional harvest dance from the western mountains of Khafal Province.”

  Kylie was on my left side; I looked over to see that Hathan had arrived soundlessly on my right. “Where’s Khafal Province?” I whispered.

  “On Arideth. The first planet we colonized after we acquired long-range spaceflight capabilities.”

  “A harvest dance from a world that was settled by spacecraft?”

  “It must sound incongruous.”

  “It does to me,” I agreed. “But then science and mysticism have never meshed very well on Earth. I guess your people found a way to reconcile them.”

  “Or we just realized that we needed them both.” I glanced at him again, a little surprised by the sentiment. He went on, “Those early explorers, in their rickety shuttles, with faulty navigation systems and no comm network to speak of . . . I don’t envy them. It would have taken a belief in something, call it what you will, to get me onto one of those first colony ships. And I would have done every ritual dance I could think of if I managed to set it down in one piece.”

  I had known for a long time now that a vein of humor and lightness was present in him, hidden deep beneath his taciturnity. Only in the days since the revelation of Vekesh’s guilt, and consequently my innocence, had I been permitted to share in it. I was still smiling when the dance began.

  Three male and three female dancers, all dressed in crimson, all with closely shorn hair, advanced with balletic lightness of step into the center of the room. The woman who had announced the dance had retreated to a corner, where she now took up the spiral instrument threaded with silver bells that I had seen played on the Pinion. To the accompaniment of the bells and a low, resonant drumbeat from another corner of the room, where a second musician was shrouded in shadow, the dancers began to move.

  The six of them wove around and past each other in figures that were simple yet precise. After a few passes, they separated, the women to one side of the room, the men to another. When they reunited, each performer was carrying a length of cord with a clear globe attached to one end. The globes had what appeared to be tiny flames flickering inside them, and although I was sure the fire was an illusion of some kind, I had no idea how it worked.

  The second phase of the dance was swifter and somehow more martial, as the performers whirled their flames in complex and flawlessly synchronized patterns. Yet there was something about it all that held me at a remove. Unlike the music I’d heard my crewmates play, the time signature here was unfamiliar. I couldn’t quite catch the rhythm of the drums, and the pattern seemed to start over at random. The dance, too, was as forbidding as it was beautiful. I thought it would have reminded me of ranshai even if the costumes had been different. The movements were a little too quick, too smooth, as if to emphasize the fact that the dancers possessed strength beyond the merely human. I wished Dr. Sawyer, the linguist who had secretly trained me in Vardeshi throughout the final year of silence before the Vardeshi themselves returned, were here to watch it. I wondered what he would have made of it as a display ostensibly selected to make two humans, far from home and weary with travel, feel welcome in a strange place.

  When the dance concluded, I nearly applauded out of habit, recalling just in time that the Vardeshi showed their appreciation through silence. After the dancers had cleared the floor, I felt Kylie’s hand brush my sleeve. “Wish me luck,” she whispered as she stepped forward.

  “Where are you going?” I hissed.

  She turned back just long enough to reply, “It’s our turn,” before crossing to the center of the room, the click of her heels clearly audible in the hush. She seemed completely untroubled by the fact that everyone present was staring at her. I didn’t know what to expect—that she would start singing, maybe—but she reached into her handbag and pulled out her phone and a portable speaker, which she proceeded to set up on a low pedestal that one of the dancers carried back onto the floor for her. She explained in a voice pitched to carry that the Council had asked her to choose a piece of classical music to play on the occasion. “It would be impossible to condense the richness and diversity of our world’s music into a few minutes,” she said. “Our culture, like yours, resists simplification. So let this piece be, like Avery and me, a symbol rather than a summary.”

  I was desperately grateful that the most public aspect of the evening had fallen to Kylie. Utterly poised, she rejoined me at the side of the room before pressing the key to begin playback. The
strains of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 filled the air. Unexpectedly moved, I shifted nearer to Kylie and rested my head on her shoulder. She put her arm around me and pulled me closer. I didn’t look to see how the Vardeshi responded to the music. It was perfect, and I knew it, and for once I didn’t care in the slightest what they thought. I closed my eyes and drew in a breath that seemed to go on forever. I didn’t know which I had been craving more, a beloved piece of beautiful music or the warmth of a friend’s arm around me. But I had the sense that a well deep inside me had been tapped dry over the past three months, and at last the cool, sweet water had begun trickling in again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After the cello music, and the brief appreciative silence that followed it, Kylie went back to retrieve her speaker. I stood watching with Governor Tavri and Councilor Zirian as the guests departed. A few came over to say personal farewells. Most of the Pinion’s crew exited en masse with no formal leave-taking—I watched them go a little enviously—but Zey and Saresh swung by to say good-night. “See?” I said to Saresh. “Not all of our music is overproduced garbage.”

  “Each offers its own insights to an observant mind,” he said, then added with a smile, “but I can’t deny that I preferred the classical.”